Brooklyn as Sam
Sam Shane is a physical therapist and Lt. Alex Hopper’s fiancee.

Genre Action-adventure
Directed by Peter Berg
Written by Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber, Brian Koppelman & David Levien
Produced by Scott Stuber, Peter Berg, Sarah Aubrey, Brian Goldner, Bennett Schneir, Duncan Henderson
Starring Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker, Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna, Asano Tadanobu and Liam Neeson
Music by A.R. Rahman
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date May 18, 2012
Country United States
Language English
Budget $140,000,000 (estimated)

Peter Berg (Hancock) produces and directs Battleship, an epic action-adventure that unfolds across the seas, in the skies and over land as our planet fights for survival against a superior force. Based on Hasbro’s classic naval combat game, Battleship stars Taylor Kitsch as Lt. Alex Hopper, a Naval officer assigned to the USS John Paul Jones; Brooklyn Decker as Sam Shane, a physical therapist and Hopper’s fiancée; Alexander Skarsgård as Hopper’s older brother, Stone, Commanding Officer of the USS Sampson; Rihanna as Petty Officer Raikes, Hopper’s crewmate and a weapons specialist on the USS John Paul Jones; and international superstar Liam Neeson as Hopper and Stone’s superior (and Sam’s father), Admiral Shane.

Berg directs this epic action-adventure also produced by Scott Stuber (Couples Retreat), Sarah Aubrey (The Kingdom), Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir of Hasbro (the Transformers franchise), along with Duncan Henderson (Master and Commander).

Summer 2012 begins with the biggest battle of all: Battleship.

- the project was to begin filming in Australia’s Gold Coast in 2010, but the production company changed locale due to a lack of Australian government tax incentives. Filming was taking place in the United States on the Hawaiian islands of Maui and Oahu, as well as in Sherman Oaks, California to do a few apartment scenes and in Playa del Rey, California where they filmed a driving scene along with a shootout. Battleship was also filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States.
- the movie is based on the Milton Bradley game “Battleship” that they have manufactured since 1931 though the manual paper and pencil version of the same game predates 1900.
- Jeremy Renner was cast but dropped out to do Paul Thomas Anderson’s religious movie, and was replaced by Taylor Kitsch.

I actually auditioned for “Battleship” while I was shooting “Just Go With It” in Hawaii. I auditioned for that a million times, I met Pete and then started working on “Battleship” shortly after that.

I worked on that for a good four months and I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people. There was weapons training, stunts with cars, it’s more of an intense film with a lot of fights and a lot of yelling.

We’ll do re-shoots. We have shot a bunch of alternate endings. I think it’s going to come down to editing really. There’s a lot of CGI to be done, a lot of post. So that’s gonna take a big chunk of time. And I think depending on the story line and how they want to take it we might be doing some re-shoots, in spring.

I did a lot of prep, because I’m a physical therapist, in military hospitals and I learned how to fix prosthetic legs, dislocated shoulders, and things like that. I definitely did a lot of training with that. As far as fighting, I’m going to go through fight training which should be fun.

I learned how to shoot a machine gun! At one point, I was sticking my arm through a windshield shooting it, and I started bleeding. Everyone was like, ‘Just use it!’ It’s fun to bring stuff like that home. They’re like battle wounds. Every time we filmed that scene over the next couple of weeks, they had to add blood and a cut to match me cutting my arm.

Battleship was a much more difficult movie for me but I found it so rewarding because of how hard I had to work to conquer that role.