Before anyone ever suggests that movies based on board games can't work, we always reach for our copy of Jonathan Lynn's Clue movie to remind us that a successful movie can be the end result. Still, in terms of source material for a film, the game Battleship strikes us as slightly odd. Not as odd as when Ridley Scott was reportedly circling the Monopoly movie a few years ago, but odd nonetheless.

What makes it an interesting prospect for us is director Peter Berg behind the camera. Hancock, his last film, split a lot of us (personally I wasn't much of a fan), but Friday Night Lights is a superb movie, and a terrifically directed one. Thus, when Berg gets attached to a new project, we tend to sit up and take notice.

But Battleship? Apparently so. Universal is betting big on one of the unlikeliest summer blockbuster ideas we've seen for some time. After all, how can you make a board game out of two fleets of ships bombing each other into a compelling three act movie? And a big-budget one at that?

We missed what seems to be the obvious answer to the question, though, which appears to be to ignore the game altogether. For in a new chat over at MTV, the film's producer - and the CEO of Hasbro - Brian Goldner has revealed that it's going to be a film about aliens. We double-checked, and there are definitely no aliens in our Battleship set (although we did get it in the sale).

Goldner told MTV that, "I think it's a really unique story and unlike a lot of those other alien stories this is really not about aliens that came here to do us harm ... So I think you'll find the story really interesting in that it doesn't begin as a fight."

So then. It's got aliens. And those aliens don't want a fight. You'd have to assume given the money that Universal is throwing at the movie that they're going to get one anyway.

Furthermore, and we were pleased to hear this, there are no plans to shoot the film in 3D. We've - and many of you - have said it before, and suspect we'll say it again: we're far from convinced about 3D still. Coraline still remains arguably the film to use it in the most interesting way on the big screen, and it's refreshing that Universal - at the moment, anyway - has no intention of boarding every one of its big projects onto this particular gravy train.

Battleship has been moved to a Memorial Day weekend release in the US in 2012, and we're promised a big action film between aliens and humans. It's certainly, right now, the most intriguing blockbuster confirmed for 2012, and it's one we'll firmly keep our eye on...

MTV