Taylor Kitsch to star in 'Battleship' film
Taylor Kitsch, who is starring in "John Carter of Mars," is moving to another sci-fi tentpole, coming on board to star in "Battleship," Universal's adaptation of the Hasbro board game.
Pete Berg is directing the action adventure movie, whose story has drawn heat from some quarters for adding an "alien invasion" element to what has been traditionally seen as a grounded Naval game.
The script, by Jon and Erich Hoeber, sees an international fleet come together to battle a water-bound armada of otherworldly origin.
Throughout the awards season, Jeremy Renner, riding high off of "The Hurt Locker" momentum, had been in the running for the role but had to decide between this movie and Paul Thomas Anderson's latest drama, with scheduling conflicts preventing his involvement in both.
For Kitsch, the role continues his rising status. The actor has gone from playing blink-and-you-missed-it parts in "Snakes on a Plane" to being a key actor in TV's "Friday Night Lights" to playing superhero Gambit in "Wolverine." He is currently shooting "Mars," where he plays the title character of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book series.
In "Battleship," Kitsch is playing a Naval commander named Alex Hopper, described as "wildly spirited" and "a great seaman but a lousy politician."
Other key roles in the film include the female lead as well as a Japanese commander.
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aiming for a release date of July 1, 2011.
Berg describes Battleship as "a contemporary story of an international five-ship fleet engaged in a very dynamic, violent and intense battle" but wouldn't name what country is supplying the enemies of the piece. He's very enthusiastic about the project, noting that he's always wanted to pit ship against ship, navy against navy. "I've been consumed with doing one of these since I tried to convince Tom Rothman at Fox to make a film about John Paul Jones, the founder of the American Navy. As a kid, I was dragged from Navy museum to museum, and spent so much time on ships, listening to my father talk about the great battles of WWII, I did my high school thesis on the Battle of Midway. When this came up, it didn't take me long to find a take for a film that is filled with raucous action-packed naval battles."
However, Berg didn't go into Battleship without doing a little gunrunning of his own. It's part of a two movie deal Berg made with Universal and in exchange for the Hasbro adaptation, he'll get to helm an Afghan war drama, Lone Survivor. So perhaps for every toy movie, we'll get a really solid drama that wouldn't be financed otherwise. Maybe we'll even get one about John Paul Jones, which I would vastly prefer to Battleship. I mean, I don't think I ever played a game of Battleship that didn't end in a screaming match because someone's submarine mysteriously escaped destruction despite that you'd covered the entire board in white pegs. How can that bode well for a film?
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