Emily Browning didn’t see her career sky-rocket as some may have expected following a starring role in Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch followed by Sleeping Beauty. Of course, it didn’t help both films were awful, but that’s all part of the game and I’d argue neither film suffered as a result of Browning, there were plenty of other reasons for their failures.
Well, along with a “hush hush” cameo role in The Host, the upcoming adaptation of “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer’s book, Browning has just landed a starring role opposite Kit Harrington (“Game of Thrones”) in Paul W.S. Anderson action epic Pompeii.
The story is set in late summer 79 A.D., and revolves around the slave of a shipping tycoon (Harrington) who dreams of the day he can buy his freedom and marry his master’s daughter (Browning). What the slave doesn’t know is that she’s already been promised to a corrupt Roman senator, while he’s been sold to another owner.
Just when things can’t get any worse, Mt. Vesuvius erupts with the power of 40 nuclear bombs. But the slave is trapped on a ship headed for Naples, separated from his love and best friend, a gladiator who is trapped in the city’s coliseum. As fire and ash destroy the only world he’s ever known, the slave is determined to get back and rescue them.
Of course, it might not seem a starring role in a Paul W.S. Anderson film is what Browning needs to turn her career around, after all, this is the director of the Resident Evil franchise, The Three Musketeers and Death Race. But, after the screenplay for Pompeii was written by Lee and Janet Scott Batchler (Batman Forever), “Downton Abbey” creator and Oscar-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park, Julian Fellowes gave the script a once over. So, there is a light at the end of the tunnel yet.
Pompeii will be released in 3-D in 2014 and is set to begin shooting in Toronto in April. [Toronto Star / UpandComers]
