I can see it now. Kid plays Battleship board game. Kid grows up and becomes studio executive. Kid, now man, runs out of ideas. Man opts to make Battleship into a movie. Man sinks Hollywood.

Just when you or I could not be surprised anymore by news of Hollywood reaching way down into the depths of the toy bin or comic box for material, news like this hits. Variety is reporting that Universal has opted director Peter Berg (THE KINGDOM, HANCOCK) to direct a film based on Hasbro/Milton Bradley’s popular board game Battleship, with a release date already set for July 1st of 2011.

If you are wondering just how they will adapt a board game that consisted of calling out numbers and placing pegs in holes, then have I got a submarine-sized synopsis for you! While these aren’t exactly specific details, Berg said that he hopes to make “a contemporary story of an international five-ship fleet engaged in a very dynamic, violent and intense battle.” From this, I cannot help but visualize two kids playing Battleship, much like this commercial, with the camera zooming into the tiny plastic pieces revealing a real battle occurring. It’s SMALL SOLDIERS meets U-571.

Berg also talked about some of his influences behind wanting to do a movie featuring battles at sea.

“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.”

The motives behind this are fairly obvious to me. Tie-ins. Merchandising. Built-in audiences that flock to the theaters because of brand recognition. The same reason they make a G.I. JOE movie with the label, yet hardly any connection to the G.I. JOE universe itself. But BATTLESHIP is not the end. What began with TRANSFORMERS and continued with G.I. JOE is now moving into full effect, as Hasbro (the toy company that owns the rights) has optioned multiple properties for film adaptations. STRETCH ARMSTRONG with Steve Oedekerk (ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS), CLUE with Gore Verbinski (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN), MONOPOLY with Ridley Scott (ALIEN), CANDYLAND with Kevin Lima (ENCHANTED), and an OUIJA film, based on the popular mystic board game.

It only makes me wonder if a film adaptation of CROSSFIRE is on the way. Either that, or a HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS movie, which coincidentally could be the title of a documentary about Hollywood executives that green light this stuff in the first place.

As a side, there was no mention of where exactly this would fit into Berg’s schedule with his recently announced sequel to HANCOCK. Yet we also learned that HANCOCK 2 does not yet have a release date set, so it is likely that it will come later, along with his planned DUNE remake.