Battleship film to be launched

B5!...miss. D9!...miss. *sigh* E2?...miss. That's right, folks, the exciting world of calling out random alpha-numerical codes is coming to a big screen near you.

Peter Berg, director behind Hancock and The Kingdom, has confirmed that his next project will be a live-action adaptation of the board game, Battleship, with Universal announcing a July 2011 release date.

Filming a script written by Jon and Erich Hoeber, the scribes behind the current Beckinsale-starrer Whiteout, Berg describes the movie as "a contemporary story of an international five-ship fleet engaged in a very dynamic, violent and intense battle."

Here's betting that the climax involves one captain drawing a grid across ye olde sea charts and destroying the enemy ships with his grasp of statistical mathematics.

Now, while the movie sounds like it could be a potentially fun, dynamic film to watch - kinda like an extreme Master and Commander - does it really have to come under the Hasbro tie-in banner of "Battleship"?

If anything, legions of action fans will boycott the film for fear of it being a kiddy flick about game strategies. They'd be better off cutting all ties with the toy firm and calling the film "Navy Kills" instead.

That's what happened with Seabiscuit - we heard it was originally going to be called "Buckaroo" and contained a scene in which the injured horse kicked out backwards just before the finishing line, throwing real-life jockey Toby Maguire forward and causing him to win by a nose.