Paul W.S. Anderson is still at it, crafting big budget mayhem, this time amid the ancient city of Pompeii as it is devastated and buried by a volcano. This is a fictional story set amid the real life historical setting of Pompeii's destruction.
The first look highlights lead star Kit Harington's intense physical transformation who plays a gladiator. He says, "The first thing I said to [Paul] was, ‘Look, I’m playing a gladiator. I feel there should be a physical transformation, if he’s as strong as you say in the script. Maybe I should sort of tone up for that?’” he said. “So I went into quite a heavy training regime five weeks before filming. I started by bulking up and then when I got out there I had four weeks to shred down and get toned. It’s a full-time job that you have to carry on for the whole of the movie. I was on a very severe diet and training six days a week. It’s the best shape I’ve been in, and I was hell-bent on getting in a certain way. When you get into that sort of training regime, it becomes addictive."
Descibing the image above, he said, "This is the first scene you see me in. It’s set in London, in fact, and it’s a scene where my character is a gladiator fighting in an arena. That’s his gladiator look. It’s a great little fight against three masked gladiators and sets up who he is and where he’s going. You see me display my skills quite early on. It’s a costume I don’t actually wear for the rest of the film, but it’s an establishing one."
CAST
Kit Harington as Milo
Emily Browning as Cassia
Kiefer Sutherland
Jared Harris as Lucretius
Jessica Lucas as Ariadne
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Bridgageous
Carrie-Anne Moss as Cassia's mother
Paz Vega as Flavia
Joe Pingue as Graecus
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: It’s late summer in 79 A.D. and the city of Pompeii glitters at the foot of the mighty Mt. Vesuvius. MILO, the slave of a shipping tycoon, dreams of the day he will buy his freedom and marry his master’s daughter, COLUMBA. What he doesn’t know is that Columba’s debt-ridden father has promised Columba to a despicable Roman Senator to pay off an overdue loan.
Milo does know that his friend, the Gladiator NIGELLUS, is being forced to compete the next day in a seemingly unwinnable battle in the Coliseum. As Milo tries to find a way to save his friend, he learns that Columba has been promised to another man and that he himself has been sold to a new master. Just as it seems things can’t get any worse, Mt. Vesuvius suddenly explodes with the power of 40 nuclear bombs, sending a torrent of 1,000-degree ash and smoke into the city. Lava flows down the mountainside, killing thousands. As Pompeii crumbles, Nigellus is imprisoned inside the Coliseum, Columba is locked inside her family’s villa, and Milo is trapped aboard a ship bound for Naples.
As the people of Pompeii flee the obliterated city, Milo is determined to return to it to save his friend and his beloved Columba. With fire and ash destroying the only world he’s ever known, an ordinary man is tested to his breaking point in this heart-pounding tale of extraordinary heroism.