On the Building of Battleship...

This is a genuinely fascinating account of how two "maritime" movies will get made:

The best choice seemed to be Battleship, which Berg had been attached to since 2008, but on which little progress had been made. The film may not have had a plot yet, let alone a script, but it had the summer-tentpole potential for explosions and great special effects, and Berg was a military history buff and beloved at NBC/Universal. That was good enough. While it may seem odd that the execs were more worried about paying a $5 million penalty than committing to a $200 million blockbuster with just a title, they were driven by both the desperate need for a big movie and the looming Comcast deal that would decide all of their future employment. They had to have something hugely promising on the books; at the least, Battleship was certainly huge.

At the time, Berg was also being wooed to direct Paramount’s Dune remake and DreamWorks’ robot battle movie Real Steel. But Universal was able to lock him down by promising him that after Battleship, he could make his passion project, Lone Survivor, based on the nonfiction account of the life and death of Lieutenant Michael Murphy, the U.S. Navy SEAL posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor in Afghanistan. Berg’s Survivor was a gritty, intensely realistic, and graphic war movie, everything that Battleship couldn’t be: Universal’s deal specified that no Hasbro movie could be rated ‘R’. There were toys to be sold!

The story is interesting on its own merits, but I suspect that there's almost much grist for thinking about contracts, desperation, and the chronic bureaucratic need to deliver something by an artificial deadline.

The Stark Realities of Defense Contracting

Davida Isaacs and I have an article at The American Prospect on intellectual property, Iron Man 2, and defense contracting:

Explosions, tattoos, and Scarlett Johansson notwithstanding, the disputes between Tony Stark and his antagonists revolve around ownership of the rights to the Iron Man technology. Iron Man 2 is the most expensive movie ever made about an intellectual property dispute.

Spitfire

I never saw this, but it seems like an intriguing project:

The dilemma that faces historians and other chroniclers of World War II is, obviously, that the World War II generation is passing very quickly. First person narratives and eyewitness experience aren't the only ways to approach either history or political science, but they can be quite important. At the same time, the massive volume of writings on World War II can sometimes serve to obscure rather than illuminate the possibility for further contribution. This is to say that it takes some work to figure just how and why a particular narrative is relevant.

Worse than Expected

A while ago, I noted that a feature film based on the boardgame "Battleship" was in the works, to be directed by Peter Berg and released in 2011. At the time, I wondered about who the enemy would be, and how the fleets would be constituted. It turns out that things are rather worse than I had imagined:

A couple of weeks ago Latino Review revealed that the bad guys in Battleship won't be another Earthly navy but in fact an alien fleet; that revelation is what spurred Berg and Universal to put this expedition together, as they wanted to get information about the movie - which won't start filming until next spring - out there to combat rumor, speculation and the natural skepticism that comes from hearing a movie is being made from one of the most plotless board games of all time.

Berg opened up the info floodgates, even showing us pre-production concepts of the alien ships. Designed by ILM, who will be doing the FX, the alien ships look like giant water bugs, with giant hydrofoil legs that race across the surface of the sea. They're huge, black and scary looking.

That's.... super. Regarding the constitution of the "Hero Fleet":

- The hero of the film is the Commanding Officer of a destroyer. The destroyer is the main ship in the film, and during the tour of the Sterett Berg told us (and the Sterett's CO confirmed) that battleships are mostly sidelined in today's Navy.

- There is a battleship component, but Berg won't explain how it works. However, he did mention that

- There is a WWII component as well. While the movie is set in the modern day and features the most cutting edge naval tech, a WWII element comes into play. I'm just spitballing here, but I bet that the alien's goal, as well as the enigmatic battleship, are connected to this WWII component.

Apparently one ship in the Hero Fleet will be Japanese; odds on whether this is the first friendly to go down? And here's Berg explaining the alien nonsense:

The idea of finding a credible context for that eluded me. The idea of a film where America goes to war against China, or a movie where America goes to war against England or Australia or Japan, one of the countries that has a credible navy, felt like it would borderline on some kind of jingoistic American military exercise I couldn't get my head around. I like the idea of something bigger, larger than life and the challenge it presented.

And so... your solution was to mashup Waterworld and Independence Day?

1915 USN Documentary

The National Film and Sound Archive has an eleven minute transfer of a USN documentary from 1915. The film is incomplete, but is thought to represent the oldest available USN documentary still in existence.

Early on, the Navy had recognized the power of moving pictures and collaborated with the Biograph Company on a now-lost series of 60 short films showing sailors and officers at work. The series screened at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland before being put to use in a Midwest recruitment tour. Naval facilities and ships also figured prominently in early newsreels and narratives. The service took care to ensure that depictions presented it in a favorable light and reserved the right, for commercial films shot with official approval, to reuse them for the Navy’s own purposes.

While the full story behind the enigmatic fragment—and how it ended up in Australia—may never be known, it was clearly filmed with permission and may even have been commissioned by the Navy from a newsreel crew. The documentary was probably made between 1914 and early 1915. (The “E-2” class submarine, pictured in the opening scene, was taken out of service in 1915 and the shells mentioned in a intertitle—“It costs the U.S. government $970.00 for each 14 inch projectile fired”—were added to the naval arsenal the earlier year.) The location seems to be New York Harbor, the site of several naval reviews during this period. Indeed, given the appearance of the presidential yacht and the number of battleships bedecked with ornamental flags, it is possible that this particular show of readiness was staged for the Commander-in-Chief.

Jutland 1916

Film studies won't become a regular ID feature, but in doing some research on "Battleship", I came across this:

A film about one of the Royal Navy’s most controversial battles is due to be shot next year.

Oscar-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley is to play the British commander, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, in the most expensive British-made film about the First World War.

Jutland 1916 will tell the story of the epic clash that took place while the outcome of the war still hung in the balance.

The £40million movie, which will be shot in Britain, will draw on diaries and first-person accounts featured in the book Jutland 1916: Death In the Grey Wastes by Peter Hart and Nigel Steel.

The film is provisionally titled "Jutland 1916," although it might be worth paying Robert Massie for the rights to the name "Castles of Steel", or even Andrew Gordon for "Rules of the Game." I haven't read the Hart and Steel volume, but I've long thought that Gordon's Rules of the Game could plausibly serve as the foundation for a film script; the first chapters (about the "Run to the South" between Beatty and Hippers' battlecruisers) just crackle. I also think that the best dramatic choice for any Jutland film would be trying to understand the battle in terms of the tension between Beatty and Jellicoe. Trying to reduce any battle to competition between two men is invariably an injury to history, but the relevant question with regard to historical epics isn't whether history is injured, but rather how badly. Kingsley as Jellicoe would be fine; perhaps Clive Owen as Beatty?

The film may never be made, but what gives me just a touch of hope is the cinematic nature of the Battle of Jutland. I have no doubt whatsoever that modern special effects can do justice to the destruction of HMS Queen Mary, and to the rest of the battle. Moreover, there are some remarkably dramatic moments within the battle, particularly when the entire Grand Fleet, arrayed in three columns, emerges from the mist ahead of the German van, or when Major Francis Harvey, legs blown off by a German shell, saves HMS Lion by ordering the flooding of the Q-turret magazine.

Battleship the Movie?

This sounds... uh, interesting?

Universal has set July 1, 2011, for the release of "Battleship," confirming Peter Berg as helmer of the live-action pic based on Hasbro's naval combat board game.

"This is a powerful brand, and in an era where brands have become the new stars, 'Battleship' is a big opportunity," said U Pictures chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde.

For Berg, the picture realizes a passion for ship-bound war stories that he picked up from his naval historian father.

"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," Berg said. "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."

Berg called the pic "a contemporary story of an international five-ship fleet engaged in a very dynamic, violent and intense battle" -- but he would not disclose any details about the enemy force.

The film will be the next directorial assignment for Berg, who last helmed "Hancock."

The mind boggles. A couple of thoughts....

• Battleship isn't exactly the most plot heavy boardgame out there; I'm curious about what kind of story they're going to use to link together the maritime battle scenes.
• "International five-ship fleet" sounds kind of twitchy, touchy feeley. I'm guessing that this isn't going to involve a thoughtful examination of the concepts set forth in the Cooperative Maritime Strategy.
• I wonder whether the "five ship fleet" will hold to the Battleship game pieces, and what that will mean in terms of ship models if it does. While Galrahn understands that an Arleigh Burke is a Battleship, I have my doubts that Hollywood will have the same sophistication. And if a DDG-51 were a Battleship, what vessels would play the role of Destroyer and Cruiser?
• In a related issue, will the film use actual ship models, or invent new types of vessel? If it's an international flotilla, I admit that I wouldn't mind seeing a Type 45 and a Sejong the Great...
• Who's the enemy? Battleship is the definition of symmetric naval warfare, so I doubt that pirates are going to be the focus. The Chinese? The Russians at least have a legitimate selection of the appropriate ship types, but the idea "international" fleet makes me suspect that the producers are going to be wary of offending anyone. Cobra, maybe?
• What will be the role of the USN in production and filming? This relates the question of what ship models will be featured; filming on a DDG-51 or an LCS would present, I think, a PR opportunity for the Navy.

In all likelihood, the film will be terrible. However, it would be nice if it made some money, and if at least some young moviegoers left the theater able to distinguish between and LCS and an Arleigh Burke.