Peter Berg, faced with initial howls of derision at the news that the opposing team in the boardgame adaptation Battleship would be an alien rather than a naval fleet, has been opening his doors and granting all-access in an effort to set minds at rest. And he's not doing a bad job of it at all.
Talking in depth to Latino Review, Berg reveals that the aliens, called The Regents, aren't necessarily technologically superior or particularly malevolent: they're just stuck here. And his reasons for going sci-fi at all are actually pretty sound: "The idea of a film where America goes to war against China, or a movie where America goes to war against England or Australia or Japan, one of the countries that has a credible navy, felt like it would border on some kind of jingoistic American military exercise I couldn’t get my head around. I liked the idea of something larger than life and the challenge it presented."
"Credible" is a word that surfaces more than once in the transcript, and is clearly something that Berg is keen to stress. "We want the audience, like with District 9 and War of the Worlds, to believe that this is for fucking real and this is going down," he says. "These films if done with integrity are very effective."
Integrity. Credibility. Aliens. Board games. We are in very strange territory here readers, but we kinda like it.
Elsewhere in the interview, Berg describes trying to corral all the players in the Hancock saga as being like "the Israeli peace process times a thousand". He's sure it will happen eventually, but the impression he gives is later rather than sooner.
And apparently Berg and Rock "The Dwayne" Johnson are both well up for a sequel to The Rundown (known around these parts as Welcome to the Jungle). "I love it. We always joke about when we’re going to do it. Sometimes it’s just a question of timing and getting all the stars to line up..."
**Dune **is off the cards completely, but was useful in terms of alien world-building experience. Navy SEAL drama Lone Survivor is, as previously reported, definitely next.