Well, Roman Polanski’s next movie certainly promises to be explosive: he’ll direct an adaptation of Robert Harris’ best-selling novel, Pompeii, about the last days of the legendary Roman town that was destroyed when nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.
Harris’ book follows the fortunes of a young engineer, Marcus Attilius Primus, who arrives in the town from Rome with plans to restore a vast aqueduct that supplies Pompeii and eight other towns. Once there, though, he is caught in a web of political intrigue, manages to fall in love, and then, of course, there’s the small matter of a temperamental mountain about to spew its guts over the surrounding countryside…
As you might have guessed, Pompeii won’t be a thriller on a small scale. In fact, with a reported budget of $130 million, it will be Polanski’s biggest film to date. But it could be an absolute corker, with romance, conspiracy and juicy parts for the principal actors (whoever they may turn out to be), while the climactic eruption should provide tons of spectacular eye candy, underpinned for the viewer that the events actually happened.
In fact, you could say that Pompeii’s formula of ‘tragic historical event’ + ‘acclaimed director’ + ‘passionate romance’ x ‘epic effects’ is not too dissimilar from the one that powered… Titanic. Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, we’re not saying that Pompeii is going to gross anywhere near as much as Jim Cameron’s behemoth (after all, countless epics trying to recapture the magic of that movie have sunk without trace since), but we are saying that it could well be one to watch with great interest.