I actually had respect for Peter Berg until 10:39 this morning, when I unfastened the gag ball and manacles for my rented lady friend, stuffed a gram of tina in her purse and assured her that if she told her pimp what happened I’d make sure the gun was loaded next time, made myself a steaming hot cup of Postum, grabbed The Hollywood Reporter off my neighbor’s front step and read this jem: Apparently Berg — director of The Kingdom, Hancock, Friday Night Lights and… well we’ll just pretend Very Bad Things never happened – is in talks to helm the big screen adaptation of Hasbro’s board game Battleship.

No, that wasn’t a mescaline flash-back. Your eyeballs just read what your brain thought they did. Battle-fucking-ship. Which is just what America was waiting for! A 40-year-old board game wherein plastic pegs are inserted into little boats for 20 minutes until you get bored and/or realize you don’t have enough pegs so you stuff the thing back into your grandma’s closet where it collects dust for another 15 years, fire up the Xbox and play Gears of War all the while thanking Crom that we no longer live in ye olden times: The Movie!

Good thing they found a “branded property” to base this movie upon because otherwise no one would come out to see it. Seriously. Look at the box office tallies, juggle the numbers — factor in home entertainment, cable TV, ancillary rights, licensing, all that good stuff – and you’ll see WITHOUT FAIL the only financially viable movies throughout history have been based on decades-old board games which contain zero plot points, story elements or characters. I know you don’t believe me. I know you think this is just bitter ol’ Ronnie Pudding all hopped up on model glue ranting sarcastic-like, but it’s true. Really fucking true. I mean that’s what the execs who put this thing in development did, right? They looked at the data and said, “well, it is a shitty idea for a film on paper, but when you crunch the numbers it’s really the only way to go.” Because otherwise they wouldn’t be making this idiotic thing, right? RIGHT?

The Hollywood, you bore me. Every day you force me to write the same story about some gimp-tarded remake, reboot or adaptation of an inanimate object. There are only so many ways to spin that, you know. Only so many ways to make “The Hollywood Am Stupid” funny. What are you frightened of? Are you so petrified of losing your job, entitlement, privilege and Facebook-friend-clout that you’d rather squeeze out countless “branded” turds like this than take a chance on the original story that would secure your place in history? You know its crap like this that put the music industry in the toilet, right? A bunch of creativity-deprived bourgeois Chicken Littles running things, doing everything they could to push out the sort of innovators on whose backs their industry had been built? Yeah, that worked out real well for ‘em. Too bad the Starbucks where Maverick Records’ old Head of A&R barista’d closed its doors. Saw him standing by the freeway off-ramp the other day holding a cardboard sign that read “will churn out generic, disposable entertainment product while pretending the internet doesn’t exist for food.” I slipped a 10 dollar bill in his McDonald’s cup, I felt so bad. No just kidding, I lured him into the park with a bottle of Smirnoff, killed him and ate him. But you notice I didn’t say I raped him. Because there but for the grace of God go I.

Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir from Hasbro will produce. Universal will studio. Final Draft operators Jon and Erich Hoeber have signed on to type the script, which I can only imagine will be the gig of their lifetimes:

“FADE IN:

EXT. PACIFIC OCEAN – DAY

B-6, B-14, C-12, G-5, A-8…”

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