I know it’s best to reserve judgment until we see the movie, but I just don’t get making a film version of the classic board game, Battleship. Well I understand how you’d make the movie, but I just don’t know why using the name adds anything to the project. Even so it’s going ahead, with Universal officially signing Hancock director Peter Berg onto the project and setting a July 1st, 2011 release date for the film.
According to Variety, the film allows Berg to realise his passion for ship-bound war stories that he picked up from his naval historian father. He says that, “As a kid, I was dragged from Navy museum to museum, and spent so much time on ships, listening to my father talk about the great battles of WWII, I did my high school thesis on the Battle of Midway. When this came up, it didn’t take me long to find a take for a film that is filled with raucous action-packed naval battles.” He added that the movie will be, “a contemporary story of an international five-ship fleet engaged in a very dynamic, violent and intense battle.”
Yes, but that’s just a war/action flick, it’s not Battleship. To do Battleship you’d have to have blindfolded pilots randomly dropping bombs into the ocean, hoping to hit something. Otherwise it’s just an utterly pointless use of the name that adds nothing to the film. Despite that Universal is conviced Battleship is a strong brand they can use to sell the film. But are more people really going to see it because it has the name of a board game, than will watch it if they just make a great action flick? Oh well, hopefully it’ll be good, but I still don’t get it.
The movie is part of a two-picture deal for Berg, who will direct Battleship next and follow that with the Afghan war drama Lone Survivor. This means that while he’s working on a sequel to Hancock and a remake of Dune, we shouldn’t expect to see them for several years.