The latest round of movie news reads more like parody than just the facts, ma’am reporting.
Peter Berg of “Hancock” fame is in talks to direct a movie based on the popular board game “Battleship.” That news comes after word leaked that Ridley Scott of “Alien” fame may helm a movie based on “Monopoly” and Michael Bay will produce one centered on a Oujia Board.
It’s one thing for an untested commercial director to ink a deal based on such tepid source material, but Berg and Scott are two of our better directors.
Is name recognition really that important in Hollywood 2009?
All movie fans can do is avoid these projects like “Freddy Got Fingered 2,” or we’ll see Reese Witherspoon in “Candyland” or “Zac Efron in “Chutes and Ladders.”
Related posts:
on 
on 
{ 1 trackback }
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
The sad thing re “Battleship” is that there’s a perfectly “good” WWI conflict called the Battle of Jutland where British and German navies clash in a huge exchange of battleship fire — smoke, loud guns, tragedy, death, life, and heroism…. It is tailor-made for movie treatment (think Tora Tora Tora or Midway — with Berg’s sensibilities and abilities I think he could make it more compelling than those — story-wise especially). “Battleship” is some marketing dunderhead’s idea of a “win-win”. Make B.O. and then extra dollars with the inevitable tie in with a new version of an old game.
Monopoly will just be leftist commie claptrap — kinda like the game — clearing out all those nice houses for damn capitalist hotels — and right during the Depression too.
I vote for Ants in My Pants or Hungry Hungry Hippo (a zombie river horse terrorizes New York after being wrongly killed by gang bangers goofing around and then through some deus ex machina comes back — escaping the Bronx Zoo). Lots of dead gangsters and hippos! Sort of like Death Wish — except with zombie hippos. OK I got nothing.
Hungry Hungry Hippo — ok, that one got my interest…
Hey, why not a remake of Sink The Bismarck!? Why do otherwise astute people confuse Hollywood’s interest in vapid stuff with an urge to picture heroic, historic deeds.
Maybe it’s my pain medicine talking, but c’mon people, these cats aren’t going to pick the difficult task over the easy one. Not ever. Maybe the next generation of filmmakers, who will be more Content/ media whizzes than anything, and who will experience clarifying events like 9/11, which will turn up the volume on the debate of moral vs. frivolous behaviors. Not that I’m wishing for more attacks or debacles, but my own preferences have little to do with the turn of events which I think are about to come our way.
A side note: as an ex-film school grad and some-time TV/Film crew member, the more I see of it, the more ashamed I am of not learning my lesson and moving on to help my fellow man with perspective and clarity regarding those things that came before us (history, news, our human nature.) See you in the blogs – and the blogs succesors!
The sad thing re “Battleship” is that there’s a perfectly “good” WWI conflict called the Battle of Jutland. .
Been saying this for years. With the state of the art of CGI Jutland could really come alive, not only that, but it would be amazingly original.
1. The Germans weren’t Nazi’s, just out of control monarchists
2. The Germans won the battle due to their superior engineering and discipline.
All it needs is a few hot well endowed german frueleins in the story and we’re talking 200 million easy.
Have your people call my people.
K — I’m on it. We’ll get the rights to Castles of Steel by Donald Massie and we’re good to go.