Kiefer Sutherland Turning Villainous For Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii

Kiefer Sutherland is perhaps best known for having played the heroic, terrorist-fighting CTU agent Jack Bauer on the long-running series 24, but he's getting ready to get his villain on in Paul W.S. Anderson's latest film.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sutherland has signed on to play the central villain in the upcoming disaster pic Pompeii, and despite what you might think he's not playing a volcano. The film will center on a slave named Milo (played by Game of Thrones' Kit Harington) who races to get home to the legendary lost city during Mount Vesuvius' eruption so that he may save both the woman he loves and his best friend, "a gladiator trapped inside the city's coliseum."

How Sutherland will stand in the way of those plans is currently unknown, but the trade notes that he will be playing a senator who forces Milo's master - played by Jared Harris - to hand over his daughter's hand in marriage. Emily Browning will play the role of the daughter, Flavia. Production on the movie began last week in Toronto, and while the film doesn't have an official release date yet it's expected to come out some time in 2014.

Sutherland has largely kept to the small screen in recent years, starring on the Fox series Touch, and was last featured in Lars von Trier's Melancholia. he will next be seen in Mira Nair's September 11th drama The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which will be getting a limited release on April 26th. You can watch the trailer for the new movie below.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.