Forget It, Jake. It's Little Italy?

Has anybody else noticed that the plot for Roman Polanski's upcoming "Pompeii" epic sounds like a First Century version of the director's masterpiece, "Chinatown"?
Based on the novel by the very good Robert Harris (whose "Fatherland" might well be the best Nazis-won-World-War-II alternative history this side of Phil Dick's "The Man in the High Castle"), "Pompeii" is all about water diversion and real estate schemes.
Only with, y'know, a volcanic eruption in place of the ever-present threat of Southern California earthquakes.
And Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson, as the beautiful girl with the bad daddy, instead of Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.
I don't know whether to be thrilled or totally depressed by this.