Director Peter Berg Updates on 'Battleship' and 'Hancock 2'

After announcing that they were going to make a film based on the game "Battleship," Universal Pictures let it be known that the bad guys in the movie aren't going to be other ships, but aliens.

I know aliens have absolutely nothing to do with the game, but how can you really make a movie based on the game? Giant red and white pegs aren't going to fall out of the sky. So instead it will be aliens.

It appears that Universal and director Peter Berg have been listening to the negative reaction their "Battleship" movie has gotten – particularly about the aliens being the “villains,” and so the studio sent some journalists and bloggers to the U.S.S. Sterett, where they got a chance to ask questions to Berg about the project.

Those lucky enough to get invited to this thing managed to get a look at some early concept art for the alien enemies, which over at Latino Review are described as, “black, [with] legs that spread out sort of like water spiders you see on the top of lakes. They looked pretty H.G. Wells-ish and supposedly each ship matches up very well to our ships.” CHUD reports the effects are being done by ILM, which is extremely encouraging news.

The alien race are apparently called The Regents, and will be a combo of real-life actors and CGI. Berg compared it to the Davey Jones effect from "Pirates of the Caribbean" (also done by ILM), but much less complicated. The aliens come from a different planet than us but one with a similar ecology to ours.
However, the interesting part is that "Battleship" will be set apart from most other alien invasion movies in that the aliens aren’t coming down to destroy or take over, but are looking to build a huge power source in the ocean. This “goal” inevitably brings them into conflict with us and our battleships becomes essentially the humans are in the way.

The aliens apparently won’t have super-advanced technology (another thing setting it apart from most invasion movies) but will employ ballistics-based weapons, like ours.

Berg also mentions that while the ships can fly and do so to get to Earth, once they land in the ocean they stay there. One of their ships will be damaged which is presumably why they can’t just fly away and are forced to battle our ships. Berg also makes mention of the fact that the story won’t all be seen from the humans’ perspective, but we’ll get to see The Regent’s side of the action, too.

Inevitably there has to be a hero fighting on our side and Berg said it will be a Commanding Officer of a destroyer ship, which is the main one we’ll see in the film. The CO has a team of five guys who will make up the team of good guys we will be rooting for.

You can head over to both Latino Review and CHUD for a whole lot more details and pics, including their tour of the U.S.S. Sterett and more answers from Berg as he was quizzed about a lot of aspects of the movie.
As for "Hancock 2," it seems that the film will be delayed due to Berg taking on the big task of directing "Battleship."

Speaking to HitFix, Berg said that "Hancock 2" will still happen at some point, just not soon.

“There are so many cooks in that particular kitchen that are so busy and Will’s [Smith] kind of taken time off to be with his kids and his kids are now making all kinds of films and there are so many people involved in that from Will to his partner James Lassiter to Akiva [Goldsmith] to Michael Man and myself,” Berg said.

“To get us all in the same room where we can talk and then agree on anything? You’ll never meet a group of people who will have a harder time agreeing on anything… I think it will happen, we just all have to get in the same room with some consistency.”

When asked about whether "Hancock 2" would be his next film after "Battleship," Berg said he wants to do "Lone Survivor," which tells the tale of, “17 seals that were killed in one gunfight in Afghanistan. One survived.” But what about after that? Well, Berg didn’t say, but hasn’t ruled out a sequel to his action-adventure, "The Rundown."
He’s not sure why no plans are in place to do "The Rundown 2," but he said he’d definitely be up for doing another:

“I love ‘The Rundown.’ I don’t know if the audience was quite ready to accept Dwayne [at the time]. We had a certain amount of resistance… They screwed around with our release date, but the film still performed well.”

“He’d [The Rock would] love it… We always joke ‘When are we gonna do it?’ But sometimes it’s just a question of timing and getting all the stars to line up. There is no reason why we wouldn’t .”

While I am less skeptical about the upcoming "Battleship" movie, I still see no connection between the movie and the game. The game literally has no plot to it as you just try to find and destroy your opponent's ships. There is no reason for the destruction and there are no aliens. I'll guess I'll wait to see some footage of the film to decide whether it will make a decent film or not (not taking in any consideration with its ties to the game).

As for "Hancock 2," I didn't like the first one. It started off decent but took a nosedive in the second half. You can't have a hero movie without a villain. While the idea for the sequel was to have more beings with superpowers, I can live without a sequel. But the studio might not wait for Berg. They may hire a new director and make the movie anyway.

What do you think about Berg and his "Battleship"? Are you looking forward to see "Hancock 2"?

More news to come! Catch ya' later!
Source: Screen Rant (1,2)