Director Paul W.S. Anderson is a tricky gentleman to figure out. His resume includes movies like Event Horizon, Resident Evil, and Death Race — which aren’t exactly “good” but are considered by many to be a lot of fun — as well as movies like Mortal Kombat, Soldier, AVP: Aliens vs. Predators, and Resident Evil: Afterlife — all of which are pretty universally disliked.

As the director finishes up post production on his new movie, The Three Musketeers (which fittingly looks like it could either be a lot of fun or downright horrible), it’s now being reported that his next project will see him venturing to ancient Rome for Pompeii.

Anderson has been signed to direct the disaster movie, which tells of the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 A.D., which saw the Roman city completely buried in 4-6 meters of ash and pumice, hiding it from the world for 1,500 years before it was accidentally rediscovered in 1599. Since then many archaeological excavations have taken place and a large portion of the city has been uncovered once again, revealing many details of the people of Pompeii and what happened in those fateful days.

As is to be expected these days, the movie won’t just be about the disaster that took place. There has to be a love story in there, as always, and this one will tell of a shipping tycoon’s slave, who’s planning to buy his own freedom and marry his owner’s daughter. Unfortunately for him, her hand has already been given to a corrupt senator, and the slave has been sold to another owner. As he’s on a boat bound for Naples, Italy, the volcano unleashes its fury and the slave has to find a way to get back to Pompeii to rescue his one true love and his best friend, a gladiator who’s trapped.

You could really, quite literally, watch this movie inside your own heads right this very moment. Go ahead — let me know how it is. I’ll wait here.

The plan is apparently to shoot the big-budgeted Pompeii beginning this time next year with a release likely for summer 2013, possibly 2014. Anderson will work from a script penned by Lee Batchler and Janet Scott Batchler.

[Source: THR]