(Battleship: Fun for the whole male family while the women do the dishes.)

Making a movie out of a board game is a pretty lame idea, but now that Peter Berg has officially signed on to direct Battleship, he wants you to focus on the most important part: the battles and the ships.

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.

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.” [Variety]

Wait, high school school’s have theses now?  I bet he just went to some fancy whiteboy school where they call term papers “dissertations” and backpacks “attachés”.  Anyway, I’m excited for this international fleet of ships idea. Especially if each ship represents a different ethnic stereotype, like the characters in Mike Tyson’s Punchout.  Like the Italian admiral could have a uniform with a big open collar with gold medallions and his hair chest showing and he could be like, “Mama mia, you sunk-a my battlesheep!”  And then it’d cut to the British commander calmly smoking a pipe while the other Brits shout “Good show!” and jerk each other off.  Because British people do that.