48 replies to this topic

[Peter T Chattaway]

Links to our threads on Transformers (2007-2011) and G.I. Joe (2009-2012), as well as other toy- and game-based films such as Candyland, Clue, Erector Sets, Magic 8 Ball, Monopoly, Risk and Stretch Armstrong (all in development). To say nothing of the Mr Potato Heads, Barbies and other real-life toys that appear in the Toy Story movies (1995-2010).

Links to our threads on other recent past, present and future alien-invasion and -visitation movies such as Cloverfield (2008), Monsters Vs. Aliens (2009), District 9 (2009), The Fourth Kind (2009), Monsters (2010), Skyline (2010), Battle: Los Angeles (2011), Mars Needs Moms (2011), Paul (2011), Attack the Block (2011), Super 8 (2011), Green Lantern (2011), Cowboys & Aliens (2011), Apollo 18 (2011), The Thing (2011), The Darkest Hour (2011), Men in Black III (2012), Pacific Rim (2013), Agent OX (in development), Alien at Large! (in development), Alien Sleeper Cell (in development), Archangel (in development), Asteroids (in development), Dark Moon (in development), Dominion: Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens (in development), Earth Defense Force (in development), The Fallen (in development), The Host (in development), The Kitchen Sink (in development), Neighborhood Watch (in development), New Kid (in development), The Nye Incidents (in development), Space Invaders (in development), They Live (in development), Under the Skin (in development), The Watching Hour (in development), Year 12 (in development) and Neil Marshall's World War 2 alien-invasion flick (in development).

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Peter Berg previews Naval authenticity and reveals 'Battleship' movie secrets
The "Hancock" and "Friday Night Lights" director is well aware of the skepticism of turning a board game into a movie. However, as the son of a Naval historian who also wrote a major high school term paper on how the Japanese could have won the Battle of Midway in WWII (he got a B+ if you're curious), Berg believes there is inherent drama in the real life strategic decisions that make a Naval warship work. In his eyes, that makes the basis of the "Battleship" game a perfect setting for a great seafaring action adventure. . . .
Yes, confirming a report from Latino Review, Berg discussed his reasons for making the adversary come from another world as we flew back to Los Angeles.
"The idea of finding a credible context for [a conventional enemy] eluded me," Berg admits. "A film where America goes to war against China or America goes to war against England or Australia or Japan or any of the few countries that have credible navies. It felt like it would border on some sort of jingoistic American military exercise that I could not get my head around. I liked the idea of something that felt big, larger than lie and I liked the challenge it presented."
Berg went on to show us concept drawings created by the wizards at ILM that featured ships the aliens -- bound to the oceans mind you and referred to as The Regent -- would take on the U.S. Navy with. Arriving from space, the ships were black with a few long panes or fins below them that allow the vessel to hover or glide along the surface of the water. Berg says the idea isn't exactly hydroplaning, but movement similar to that of a water bug. He also said that like in the game, The Regent's feet of ships would be similar in power and strength of a fleet of U.S. destroyers with one Japanese warship along for good measure. The Regent's ships are a bit more advanced than current human technology, but not so much that they shoot lasers and we have a mini-version of "ID4" on our hands. They'll use similar ballistics to the missiles the American forces will have. And, of course, just like in the game some of the ships are harder to sink than others. . . .
Hitfix, December 2

Edited by Peter T Chattaway, 27 July 2011 - 12:47 PM.

[Darryl A. Armstrong]

[Peter T Chattaway]

Jeremy Renner in Talks for ‘Battleship’, ‘Raven’ & Mystery Project
Jeremy Renner is quickly becoming the toast of the Hollywood scene thanks to his latest movie The Hurt Locker. Although he didn’t win the Best Actor Award at last night’s BAFTAs, The Hurt Locker did win quite a few awards, and Renner’s role as SSG William James, the adrenaline junkie that diffuses bombs in Iraq, has propelled him to the top of everyone’s short list. . . .
ScreenRant, February 22

EXCLUSIVE: 'Battleship' Won't Begin With An Alien War, No 3-D Planned
Peter Berg's "Battleship" movie may be based on a classic table-top game and have an epic confrontation between humans and aliens in store for Memorial Day Weekend in 2012, but the summer action flick won't begin with a fight, and Universal doesn't plan to shoot it in 3-D. Those details alone may set it apart from its competition in two years.
"I think it’s a really unique story and unlike a lot of those other alien stories this is really not about aliens that came here to do us harm," producer and Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner told MTV News. "So I think you’ll find the story really interesting in that it doesn’t begin as a fight." . . .
MTV Movies Blog, February 23

[Peter T Chattaway]

Taylor Kitsch will climb into Pete Berg's battleship
EXCLUSIVE: A key hole in Universal's "Battleship" has been filled: Taylor Kitsch is coming on to star as Hopper, one of the lead parts in the high-profile nautical action-adventure. . . .
Los Angeles Times, April 7

[Tyler]

Tic Tac Toe: X v. O


"From the producers of Duck Duck Goose, Got Your Nose, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich..."

[Peter T Chattaway]

Ron Meyer May Be Sunk at Universal: Was a Roster of Board-Game Movies His Final Mistake?
Universal’s troubles have been well-documented, if not well-attended: Their nearly uninterrupted string of flops (Land of the Lost, Public Enemies, State of Play, The Wolfman, Green Zone, Repo Men, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) dates back to two summers ago. Meyer’s movie studio is largely bereft of big franchises, and if he is forced out one of the last straws may have been his enormous gamble to get more of them: A constrictive — some say punishing — six-year deal with toy giant Hasbro to turn at least four familiar games and toys like Candy Land, Battleship, Stretch Armstrong, and the Ouija Board into big-budget films. . . .
The studio’s enthusiasm for Hasbro’s aggressive timetable waned. But they were trapped: The Hasbro deal contained awful consequences for delaying production. Not interested in making Battleship for 2011? Lost your Candy Land screenwriter to another studio’s project? How does a $5 million kill fee and the loss of the rights to make the film grab you?
“The language was so strict, Universal begged to get out if it,” explains one insider who insisted on anonymity because of involvement in settling up another Hasbro film at the studio. "But they jammed a gun to their head to make the movies.” (Universal reps declined to speak about the Hasbro dealings.)
In February 2009, almost a year had elapsed since its deal with the toymaker, and Universal needed to pick a Hasbro title to greenlight soon, or start writing fat checks and immediately start losing the properties. They surveyed the progress on their inventory: Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder) had been working on a script for Candy Land with Enchanted director Kevin Lima, but Cohen was leaving the project to work on Sony’s greenlit sequel to Men in Black 3. Ridley Scott had been developing a Monopoly movie for ages, but was busy with Robin Hood, and in any event was more interested in planning his back-to-back 3-D Alien prequels. Execs thought a Oujia board script by National Treasure’s Cormac and Marianne Wibberley had promise, but it wasn’t greenlightable yet. As for Stretch Armstrong, it was delayed waiting for Taylor Lautner’s availability, which was limited by the Twilight movies that had made him a star. The best choice seemed to be Battleship, which Berg had been attached to since 2008, but on which little progress had been made. The film may not have had a plot yet, let alone a script, but it had the summer-tentpole potential for explosions and great special effects, and Berg was a military history buff and beloved at NBC/Universal. That was good enough. While it may seem odd that the execs were more worried about paying a $5 million penalty than committing to a $200 million blockbuster with just a title, they were driven by both the desperate need for a big movie and the looming Comcast deal that would decide all of their future employment. They had to have something hugely promising on the books; at the least, Battleship was certainly huge.
At the time, Berg was also being wooed to direct Paramount’s Dune remake and DreamWorks’ robot battle movie Real Steel. But Universal was able to lock him down by promising him that after Battleship, he could make his passion project, Lone Survivor, based on the nonfiction account of the life and death of Lieutenant Michael Murphy, the U.S. Navy SEAL posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor in Afghanistan. Berg’s Survivor was a gritty, intensely realistic, and graphic war movie, everything that Battleship couldn’t be: Universal’s deal specified that no Hasbro movie could be rated ‘R’. There were toys to be sold!
Berg agreed to make both, and by March 2009, he’d begun working on a script with Red screenwriters Jon and Eric Hoeber to come up with the spaceships versus battleships plot. With only a treatment in hand, Universal quickly set a July 4, 2011 release date. Not long after, however, Michael Bay announced that that would be the opening date for his Hasbro movie, the third Transformers movie. Universal didn’t want to move to later in the summer, afraid that then their blockbuster would be considered an afterthought, so new studio heads Adam Fogelson and Donna Langley went to Hasbro’s Goldner to plead for an extension.
Let’s stop for a moment to really underline the moviemaking times we are living in: Hollywood studio heads were begging a Rhode Island toy company for more time so they could spend $200 million on a state of the art CGI film based on an early twentieth-century board game. So, there we are.
Hasbro, which already had a surefire hit pegged in Transformers, felt benevolent and let them move Battleship to May 2012. . . .
Vulture, New York, November 3

[Peter T Chattaway]

Exclusive : Back to the Battleship
“Battleship”, the feature film spin-off of the board game we all played growing up (before moving onto the nifty ‘Computer Battleship’), may be in the can, but it’s is still a good year away from release. According to actress Brooklyn Decker, who plays ‘Sam’ in the uber-expensive tentpole, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done on the sea-set actioner.
Says Decker, “We will do reshoots. We have shot a bunch of alternate endings. There’s a lot of CGI to be done – a lot of stuff in post.”
Reshoots?
“Yes, depending on the storyline and where they want to take it we might be doing some reshoots”, explains the cordial actress. . . .
Moviehole, January 12

[Peter T Chattaway]

Edited by Peter T Chattaway, 29 July 2011 - 02:14 PM.

[Jason Panella]

Just because the question is asked in this thread's subheading, Corey Dauch (who designed the cult favorite miniature / board game HeroScape) designed a new take on the Battleship property called Battleship Galaxies. This has been in the works for years, and I believe it just came out this week.

What's most interesting to me is that Hasbro is really trying to tap into the hobby board game market, and that this game is actually getting really good reviews.

[Tyler]

Movieline has a preview, with pictures.

[Peter T Chattaway]

[bowen]

Looks pretty terrible. Interesting to see that the second trailer dispenses with whatever was supposed to pass for characterization from the first trailer. Effects work looks a LOT like the Transformers movies, which of course is no accident. Eventually audiences' eyes have to start glazing over when confronted with this sort of thing. For my part, I think right about now would be a good time.

[SDG]

What Bowen said.

[Peter T Chattaway]

[Joel Mayward]

Peter T Chattaway, on 14 March 2012 - 01:49 AM, said:

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7N-33PbR-g"]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=u7N-33PbR-g[/url]

Wow. The entire film has been reduced to a series of huge explosions peppered with cliche action-film dialogue. Rihanna's "boom" sums it up pretty well.

I'm a youth pastor, and I can imagine sixth-grade boys drooling over this.

[Tyler]

Joel Mayward, on 14 March 2012 - 09:06 AM, said:

Wow. The entire film has been reduced to a series of huge explosions peppered with cliche action-film dialogue.

This implies the film was more than that to begin with.

[Jason Panella]

Tyler, on 14 March 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

This implies the film was more than that to begin with.

BOOM.

Peter mentioned in the John Carter thread how there probably aren't that many people anxious to see this movie. Call me cynical, but I bet there are plenty of people anxious to see this. I won't make any blanket judgement calls, but they probably don't have much overlap with A&F as far as taste goes.

[Joel Mayward]

Tyler, on 14 March 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

Joel Mayward, on 14 March 2012 - 09:06 AM, said:

Wow. The entire film has been reduced to a series of huge explosions peppered with cliche action-film dialogue.

This implies the film was more than that to begin with.

Nah, it's just that I've never seen a film's trailer actually embrace its own vacuity. They don't even attempt to show a narrative or actual characters here; every scene is only meant to reveal how big the explosions will be.

[Thom Wade]

What are you guys talking about?! There is totally a narrative. Aliens are blowing stuff up...and we try to blow them up back! What's not to see?

[Peter T Chattaway]

49% at Rotten Tomatoes. 43 at Metacritic. And $126.7 million in the till since opening overseas a week and a half ago. It won't open in North America for another four weeks.

(For those who wish to compare this film's numbers to those of John Carter, the OTHER Taylor-Kitsch-battles-aliens movie of the year, it is currently at 51%, 51 and $200.6 million, respectively.)