Get your First Look at the Direct-to-Blu-Ray Doom Movie

When you hear “video game movie”, it comes with certain connotations: these days, almost always bad.

When you hear “direct to Blu-Ray movie”, it comes with certain connotations: almost always bad.

So when I tell you “direct to Blu-Ray video game movie”, what do you think?

Doom: Annihilation.


 

DOOM: ANNIHILATION, the intense action-packed next installment to Doom, from Universal Pictures, will be released in Fall 2019. The all-new film builds upon the legacy of the franchise, whose origins derived from the popular first-person shooter video game franchise, DOOM. DOOM: ANNIHILATION follows a group of space marines as they respond to a distress call from a base on a Martian moon, only to discover it’s been overrun by demonic creatures who threaten to create Hell on Earth.

So… Bethesda has gone on record as saying they’ve got nothing to do with this movie, probably because Universal Pictures already owns the film rights to this series and they can go ahead with this without any kind of go-ahead. And the logic behind the decision is fairly obvious: as an IP, Doom is back in the spotlight, and since Universal will likely lose the rights to it if they don’t do SOMETHING with the property, boom… direct-to-video release.

For what it’s worth, from what we see in the 30 second trailer, while the graphics and the stages are fake and bad, they’re the kind of authentic fake and bad that tend to lean towards charming. There’s clearly a lot more attention to making this seem more like “Doom” than the last attempt to turn it into a movie, with big, fake-looking guns and the rev of chainsaws, so I could actually see this as being a fun shlock film that you and your friends put on with some midnight pizza.

It comes out this October, though, so you’ll need to wear your long-sleeve jammies.