At a recent panel at Wondercon in Anaheim, Battleship director Peter Berg discussed his history with Hollywood and the inspiration for the movie that came from his father and Stephen Hawking. In an article over at Slashfilm, Peter Sciretta recounts Berg’s history: his father was a Marine and Berg picked up a lot from him. He had always wanted to make a naval movie, yet no one within the Hollywood system was interested in his idea. So when he was offered the Battleship property, he jumped on the opportunity to bring his expertise to the film.

Though the added background on Berg’s history and aspirations does give some depth to the project, I’m still not very convinced that this year’s crop of board game adaptations are going to deliver. What is the difference between board game and video game adaptations? Both are often underwhelming in their anticipation yet they keep happening. I’ve played my fair share of compelling board games and could definitely see a few of them being translated on to the big screen. The Game of Thrones board game shows that it’s pretty easy to go the opposite direction, but fleshing out the political intrigue, motivations and maneuverings of a game of San Guo Sha in two hours seems impossible, though I’d love to see it.