Movies are a product of their time, and that’s particularly true of this blockbuster. There was a time, not even 15 years ago, when studios were willing to shell out over $200 million for a film adaptation of the board game Battleships. Exactly, it’s about Battleship, which is on TV today. We explain that bizarre concept of the film and its complete miscalculation.
Battleships as a movie?! This is what happens in Battleship
The strategy aspect of Battleships can certainly be transferred to a film. Only a terribly generic plot was knitted out of it. Battleship is something between Pearl Harbor and Independence Day. The film takes place on a naval base. Young naval officer Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) and his brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård) are stationed in Hawaii. There they are confronted with an alien invasion. The aliens followed a signal from the humans who sent them into space as an invitation. But apparently the aliens misunderstood the invitation – which Alex and his comrades soon got to feel at first hand.
Battleship – Trailer (German) HD
In the middle of the action is superstar Rihanna, who made her acting debut in Battleship and took on the role of quick-witted weapons expert Raikes. She wasn’t deterred by the experience and played a bigger role again, for example in Ocean’s 8.
Battleship was extremely expensive and flopped terribly
How did the idea of filming Battleships come about in the first place? Let’s travel 12 years into the past. Superhero films were already a sure-fire source of income for Hollywood studios, but they weren’t as dominant in cinema as they are today. The most successful blockbuster series was not the MCU, but: transformers. The Michael Bay hits have consistently grossed over $1 billion despite or because they were toy-based. You don’t know that exactly. (In the home cinema: sci-fi cult with one of the best movie titles of all time *)
The Universal studio apparently drew the wrong conclusions from the “Transformers” cash cow. The idea of building a complex sci-fi action blockbuster from the children’s game Battleship was born. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. At least no worse than putting toy robots that can transform into cars at the center of a blockbuster.
But did you have to implement them with a budget of up to 220 million US dollars? Oh well. The blockbuster didn’t even come close to building on the successes of the Transformers series. It grossed just $303 million, according to Box Office Mojo. If we add the marketing costs of around 200 million dollars to the production budget, Battleship ends up well in the red.
When is Battleship on TV?
Battleship runs on Saturday at 8:15 p.m. on VOX on free TV. A repeat of the sci-fi hit is not planned. But you can stream it on Netflix.
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