BoxOffice® Pro - May 2012

YOU SUNK MY TOP-OF-THE-LINE
AEGIS CLASS DESTROYER!
BATTLESHIP DIRECTOR PETER BERG ON BLENDING NAVAL ACCURACY, INTERPLANETARY SCI-
ENCE AND A 100-YEAR-OLD STRATEGY GAME INTO ONE BIG SUMMER FLICK
PETER
BERG SETS
UP THE
SCENE
There’s no formula for a Peter Berg movie—how could there be when his credits include Friday
Night Lights, The Kingdom and Hancock? But there is a pattern. Berg is the thinking man’s macho
moviemaker, and while his films look like they’re made of testosterone, his intelligence and craft
lure in a much broader swath of film lovers than you’d expect from, say, an action-comedy starring
The Rock and American Pie’s Seann William Scott. Yet, I’ve personally met several girlie girls—and
also tea-drinking boys—who cite The Rundown as one of their
favorite flicks, and now building off the massive cross-
generational,
trans-American, red- and blue-state suc-
cess of his TV show Friday Night Lights, Berg is back
on the big screen for his first feature in four years, a
popcorn flick that has its roots in Hasbro but aspires
to be something much, much smarter.
Battleship is a game with a bunch of red and white pegs.
Where do you start in translating that visually to a screen?
Battleship is a game with five different naval warships fighting five
different naval warships in a confined space. I would start with that.
As a long-standing student of the Navy—and my father was a naval
historian—I’ve always had a major amount of respect for navies and
naval warfare. It’s something I’ve been interested in my whole career.
I’ve tried to do several films about Naval warfare, starting with a film
about John Paul Jones, who was the founder of the American Navy.
Have you heard of him?
I have—my uncle was in the Navy.
So ask your uncle what an awesome story John Paul Jones would be. I
tried to do that, then Master and Commander came along and knocked
that one out. I tried to do a movie based on the book The Heart of
the Sea. It’s the story of Essex, a whaling ship out of Nantucket which
sunk and was the inspiration for Moby Dick. That one ended in cannibalism,
and studios weren’t interested in that. I tried to do a movie
about the Indianapolis, which is the battleship that carried the two
atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. It was sunk, and the crew
were all eaten by sharks. That was tough to get going, since everyone
is dying and being eaten by sharks. So I’ve been frustrated wanting
to do a naval warfare film, and then after the success of Transformers,
Iron Man and Avatar, I started to look at these big super movies and I
kind of wanted to do one. I thought about Battleship as a brand. The
idea of, “Okay, we’ve got five Navy ships fighting other ships in a
contained environment.” I thought, “I bet you could create a story
around that.” It proved to be true, and it proved to be one of the
more enjoyable and creative challenges in my career.
I heard you had actual Navy crewman with you on set.
It’s true. We had a very good relationship with the Department
of Defense. We shot on aircraft carriers and destroyers. We had
a lot of active Naval personnel who were on breaks coming over
and working with us. We shot on Pearl Harbor. We shot on Japanese
destroyers. We had a great relationship with the Navy.
(continued on page 96)
APRIL L20
2012
BOXOFFICE OFFI
FI
PRO 95