In the Navy: Battleship Trailer

So, about a year or two ago, Hasbro was riding high on the success of their live-action Transformers and G.I. Joe films, so they started looking around at what other things they owned that could be turned into blockbuster movies.  In a move that had a lot of people scratching their heads, Hasbro entered into a development deal with Universal to develop several dozen Hasbro board games into movies.

A few announcements were quickly made to go along with this deal.  Michael Bay (the Transformers trilogy) showed an interest in making a horror/thriller about the Ouija Board.  Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, the most recent Robin Hood) was announced to develop Monopoly into a film.  Scripts based on Candy Land and Clue are also in the midst of development.

The first one out of the gate is coming in Summer of 2012:  Battleship.  At first glance, people were thinking, "Well, OK, Battleship could form the basis for a rather run-of-the-mill Naval thriller...like a good old fashioned submarine movie or something like that."  But then, Hasbro went, "Wait a minute.  Our biggest hit was Transformers.  Let's throw some aliens in there!"

So now it's about a Naval fleet fighting aliens in the Pacific.

Taylor Kitsch, Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, plays our hero, a reckless young Naval officer with the a thing for the Captain's daughter.  Liam Neeson plays the captain, and supermodel Brooklyn Decker is the Captain's daughter.  True Blood star Alexander Skarsgard plays Kitsch's brother, and pop star Rihanna makes her acting debut. 

The director is Peter Berg, who brought us the Dwayne Johnson action film The Rundown, the critically acclaimed football drama Friday Night Lights (both the original movie and the pilot for the TV show) and the Will Smith superhero flick Hancock.  (Oh, and for the the sports fans, he also did the 30 for 30 documentary Kings Ransom, which was about the Gretzky trade.)

Battleship hits theatres on May 18, 2012.