Peter Berg Taking Aim At “Battleship”

Hey kids! Let’s destroy some destroyers! 

“You sank my battleship!”

 If that phrase means anything to you, then you are either a frantic sea captain or an aficionado of the game Battleship. And if you are the latter, then you might or might not be glad to hear from The Hollywood Reporter that Peter Berg is in talks to direct a film based on the game. The film would be another part of the deal Universal struck with gamemaker Hasbro. Other projects in the works from the partnership include “Ouija Board” is being produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes shingle, “Candy Land” has Kevin Lima attached to direct with Etan Cohen writing the script, and Ridley Scott is developing a project based on “Monopoly.”

Now if you don’t know Battleship, then reminder–this is the game where players place ships on a grid and their opponent tries to guess the location of the ship in order to attack it. Once played on paper with  pencils, the game is now a video game.

The movie would most likely be “an epic naval action adventure, which sounds like something Berg could handle after war movie ”The Kingdom” and superhero film “Hancock.”

The board games as films thing seems like a good idea to me in general–you get instant background and some idea of what a plot’s arc can be like. But Battleship in particular seems like it should be fun. The only question is what time period it will be set in, and what kind of ship’s we’ll get. Hmmm…interesting…