Bring it on Battleship haters, because director Peter Berg isn’t afraid of you.
Sure, a lot of film fans are shaking their heads in disgust that Hollywood is so devoid of ideas, it’s now turning to board game adaptations like Candyland, Oujia, and of course, Battleship.
Battleship has also drawn ire from fans because of its hefty budget (reportedly in the $200 million range), while Universal has passed on more interesting movies like Guillermo Del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness, and The Dark Tower.
But Battleship director Peter Berg, who also directed The Kingdom and Friday Night Lights, is hoping to win audiences over once they finally see the film, which is due for release on May 18, 2012.
As Berg told Moviefone, “There’s been so much inherent skepticism about how you can make a film about plastic pegs and grids. To me, it was all about naval warfare and the modern navy. I always knew there could be a film there, but now the reality of actually executing that is an awesome task.”
And as evidenced in Battleship’s trailer, the film centers around an alien invasion, causing some to dub the film “Transformers meets Pearl Harbor.” Yet Berg is glad that with Hasbro there is brand awareness, much like there’s Habsro brand awareness with The Transformers, whose toys helped make the franchise huge at the box office.
As Berg continued, “There’s always inherent cynicism particularly amongst us, the cinema intelligentsia, but you go on to your average high school football game outside of Philadelphia and say, ‘Yeah, I’m doing this film called Battleship. ‘Oh the game? That’s cool. I love that game.'”
