Movies that were supposed to launch franchises (but didn’t): Battleship

https://lebeauleblog.com/2019/02/08/movies-that-were-supposed-to-launch-franchises-but-didnt-battleship/

The Lego Movie 2 opens today. The first movie was good enough that audiences objected when it was snubbed for an Oscar, but movies based on toys have a pretty lousy track record. Prior to the first Lego movie, the most successful toy-based franchise was Transformers. While Michael Bay’s robot epics have proven profitable, few would argue that they are good movies.

Universal looked at the Transformers franchise and thought, “hey we could probably do that. What toys do we have lying around?” Their answer was... Battleship.

A generation of kids grew up on Transformers. The toys combine two things little boys have traditionally loved, robots and cars, into one very versatile plaything. Why would a robot need to disguise itself as a car? Kids don’t ask these questions. A car that changes into a robot and vice versa is just cool. Nuff said.

Other toy-based movies tried to cash in on the Transformers model. GI Joe was an obvious next step. But The Rise of Cobra couldn’t duplicate the success of the robot movies. Bay went on to rip himself off by producing a reboot of the Ninja Turtles (technically a comic book property but equally toyetic) to mixed results.

With the obvious toylines spoken for, Universal looked around for something that could be adapted into a summer blockbuster. They settled on Milton Bradley’s naval board game, Battleship. Readers of a certain age will remember the familiar cry of “You sunk my battleship!” from years of Saturday morning commercials.

The game was a staple of indoor recess. Many a rainy day, we played Battleship or Clue (which also got the big screen treatment in the ’80’s). But it doesn’t exactly scream “movie”. Players guess coordinates on a grid and if they guess right they put a red peg in their opponent’s boats. Fill a boat with pegs and it’s eliminated. First one to sink all of their opponent’s boats wins. There were no robots in Battleship.

A faithful adaptation would have depicted a naval battle. Probably a period piece set during World War II. It would have focused heavily on strategy as two commanders tried to determine the location of the enemy fleet. It wouldn’t have appealed to kids at all, so Universal and director Peter Berg added aliens instead. Kids like aliens, right? Aren’t the robot/cars in Transformers kind of aliens?

While the decision to sex up the source material is understandable, it begs the question “Why make a movie based on a board game at all?” As it turns out, this was a very valid question that Berg and Universal probably should have spent a little more time figuring out. A big part of the success of Transformers was the nostalgia 80’s kids felt for the toys and cartoon series. That didn’t exist for Battleship.

For his lead, Berg cast Taylor Kitsch with whom he had worked on the TV show, Friday Night Lights. In 2012, Kitsch seemed to be poised for movie stardom. He starred in two, tentpole movies released mere months apart. If either one of them hit, he was well on his way to the A-list. Unfortunately, the first of those two movies to hit theaters was Disney’s infamous turkey, John Carter. By the time Battleship hit theaters, the stink of failure was all over the actor.

Berg also cast swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker and pop star Rihanna in an effort to find the next Megan Fox. Alexander Skarsgård was testing the waters for a post True Blood movie career. And Liam Neeson cashed a big fat paycheck in an effort to class up the joint.

The one area in which Battleship equaled Transformers was with critics. Both series were panned. That’s not even entirely true because Michael Bay’s first movie got decent reviews from critics who considered Transformers to be a guilty pleasure. Battleship’s reviews more closely matched the universally reviled Transformers sequels.

Projections placed the opening weekend somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million dollars. Battleship underperformed with a second-place opening of $25 million. That’s a lot of money, but not nearly what Universal needed to make in order to break even. Part of the problem was that Marvel’s Avengers was over-performing all summer long. In its third week in theaters, Avengers more than doubled Battleship’s box office receipts.

The estimated production costs were north of $200 million dollars and Universal spent a lot of money marketing Battleship on top of that. The movie’s domestic gross came in at $65 million dollars. You sunk my battleship, indeed. Fortunately, this stuff plays well to international audiences. Battleship grossed over $200 million overseas.

Universal also hedged their bets with over $50 million dollars in cross-promotional tie-ins with companies like Coca-Cola, Nestle and Subway. But even with the international sales and marketing tie-ins, the studio still took a loss of $83 million dollars.