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by Matt Goldberg Posted:August 13th, 2010 at 11:57 am
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Universal is making a big gamble on Peter Berg’s adaptation of the board game Battleship. THR reports that “Execs even considered pulling the plug on Battleship in June.” One of the major obstacles is that Battleship has no big name stars. It’s being led by Taylor Kitsch (TV’s Friday Night Lights) , Alexander Skarsgard (True Blood) and Rihanna, but Kitsch lacks mainstream name recognition and audiences tend to be wary of musicians who want to act. And while Battleship is a recognizable name, it also may send some potential viewers bemoaning, “They’ll make anything into a movie!”
Hit the jump for more on this risky play by Universal.
THR points out other causes for concern:
- Peter Berg isn’t a brand-name director even though his last movie was the highly successful Hancock. However, Hancock had Will Smith.
- Comcast, which is about to acquire NBC-Universal, may not be too pleased with what they perceive to be bloated budgets and no hits movies to show for it.
- Movies that are set on water are prone to production problems (e.g. Waterworld).
Personally, I like a good naval warfare movie (although I prefer submarines to battleships) and it’s not like these kinds of flicks are over-running the marketplace right now. Battleship is a gamble, but there’s hardly a “sure-thing” in Hollywood. Battleship may be a tough sell to audiences, but it’s far from an impossible one.
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It's also a terribly uninteresting one. I like naval warfare as much as the next guy, but as soon as they announced they'd be fighting aliens, I lost all interest. Stupid international market, making it so we can't fight actual people anymore…
They Should've Sunk this movie, Its based off of a board game that quite literally is “A7″ “miss” B3″ “Hit” …and they are willing to shell out $200Million!? WOW, I could make a better movie with 20 bucks. Do Yourselves a favor Universal: can the movie and use the $200Million for something a *tad* bit better
I can't tell if your joking or not, are they really fighting aliens? I really haven't heard anything about this movie so I don't know. What I really can't figure out is why they just didn't come up with a diferent name instead of paying for the rights to use the Battleship name which I can't see as a draw for audiences.
I wish I were joking. It's possible they've changed it, but the last I heard, they were very much fighting aliens.
Berg and universal should be using their time and money on their other planned projects such as Army of Two or a sequel to Hancock. Making a movie based off of a board game is bizarre enough as it is, but take into consideration that it's plot has to do with aliens it's completely bonkers!
This is good news, Universal planning to cancel Battleship. I think this movie's gonna suck.
BTW where did you get that Universal logo?
That's okay; after Joss Whedon does an amazing job with The Avengers and it becomes the biggest movie ever, Universal will be clamoring for a Serenity sequel.
THAT is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Aliens, in Battleship? Last I checked the game never featured aliens. Why don't they just have America fight itself, like the Navy splits into two groups one who opposes the government and the other who doesn't and they have to fight it out to the finish. I haven't seen any movies like that.
The only thing like that I can think of is Babylon 5, which was cool.