Director Peter Berg says that he loved making Battleship and that he’d be on-board to make a sequel. And while the film did well world-wide, it was a huge disappointment in the United States.
And Berg thinks he knows why–The Avengers.
“Battleship is a film that I would definitely like to do a sequel to. I loved making that film. I had a great time with it. The movie kicked butt internationally, but we kind of ran into a wall when Avengers refused to go away. So what I need everyone to do is go see Battleship now that they’ve seen Avengers five times. If they do that, we can definitely make a sequel,” he tell MTV.
“I would have loved to have come out three weeks before The Avengers domestically, like we did internationally,” said Berg. “The Avengers outperformed everything. It was impossible for Battleship to get any oxygen. We did OK, but in hindsight, which my grandmother used to say is worth about a bucket of spit, we would have [released the movie] ahead of The Avengers, not realizing it would have become, I think, the second biggest film in history behind Avatar.”
No Mr. Berg. “The Avengers” was a good movie and yours sucked balls. Don’t blame someone else for your massive failing.
Hmm, I’m thinking he’s delusional.
Don’t blame anything that Joss Whedon creates for the fact your “film” sucks dogs for quarters…MUMBLER!
Maybe we are tired of this type of crap and the rest of the world is not- IMO this would have sucked in the theaters regardless of the time. I will watch it when I can get it for free just to see if it is a good bubble gum movie to watch. Hope it is not too painful
I had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, since he’d directed “Hancock”, and that was a far better movie than I went in expecting. The fact that the credited writers are the guys who did “RED” also made me think that maybe they could overcome the stink, I mean stigma, of being based on a 50yr old child’s game.
He’s in denial about a few things with “Battleship”, however.
First, how popular was the game Battleship internationally back in the day? The biggest stumbling block domestically was telling everyone “Hey, we’re doing a movie based on the game Battleship!” at which point everyone who played the game as a kid in the 70s and 80s all looked at each other and said “Seriously?” If it never reached the same point of pop culture saturation internationally, that’s why most people overseas didn’t go see it with thoughts of “B3, you sank my battleship” lurking in the back of their minds.
Second, movie based on a glorified board game with no action or mystery. Not a line of action figures, not a particular toy character, a generic board game that requires no imagination on the part of the players outside of placing your ships where your opponent is unlikely to guess their position (can you say precursor to Minesweeper, kids?). It’s too large a hurdle for most of us to ignore to be able to watch or enjoy the movie.
The only movie I can think of to overcome that suspension of disbelief problem was “Clue”.
Third, Peter, were you paying full attention when casting was going on? Was your casting director getting kickbacks? I had hoped you could pull that movie premise off until I saw the full cast, then I threw in the towel. I couldn’t even keep up a pretense to yank Brian’s chain about it 🙂
He would have been better off actually making the Joust movie, and sour graping Avengers isn’t going to change the fact that he made a bad call. It was a bad call, Ripley, a bad call.