One of next year's most anticipated films, BATTLESHIP, Produced and directed by the talented Peter Berg (HANCOCK), will be a multimillion dollar epic pitting the crew of a battleship (including Liam Neeson and mega-hottie Brooklyn Decker) against evil aliens. Not to be outdone, The Asylum, makers of mockbusters like MEGA PIRANHA, SNAKES ON A TRAIN and the timeless classic, MEGA SHARK v.s. GIANT OCTOPUS, have announced BATTLESHIPS, which will probably resemble the other film in every way other than the multimillion dollar part...

The film's writer director is Thunder Levin, maker of MUTANT VAMPIRE ZOMBIES FROM THE 'HOOD. The likable Levin is looking forward to joining The Asylum. "At the moment I’m hard at work on the screenplay for BATTLESHIPS. The truth is, I haven’t yet had any actual filmmaking experience with the Asylum, so I don’t know how much I can tell you about making a movie with them. When I wrote 200 MPH for them, I was in their office once for a half-hour meeting and then I visited the set for a couple of hours and that was it. Mostly it was just me sitting at my computer writing, then getting notes and rewriting. I’m sure once I turn in my first draft on BATTLESHIPS and I start to get into preproduction, I’ll have more interesting and informed things to tell you. At the moment I don’t even have an approved logline yet.

"Right now I can only tell you that I’m very excited to be directing for the Asylum, I’m looking forward to finally making a film with my old friend David Latt (Co-Founder of The Asylum), and I think BATTLESHIPS will be a fun, exciting movie with more action than humanly possible!" 

"As for making a 'mockbuster', I’m really not thinking of it that way. I don’t know anything about Peter Berg's BATTLESHIP, I haven’t even seen the trailer, and I intend to keep it that way. The Asylum just asked me to pitch them ideas for a movie called BATTLESHIPS, I gave them a few ideas, they picked the one they liked best. We developed it together, and now I’m just going to try to make the best movie possible." 

Will it have the usual Asylum elements? "I’m honestly not sure what 'Asylum elements' are, so I won’t be intentionally including them. I can just tell you that there will be a LOT of action, an epic scale, and battleships will definitely be involved! The title is not misleading in any way! Which I guess is kind of in keeping with the last film I directed (“Mutant Vampire Zombies From The ‘Hood!”), where the title also told you exactly what you were getting," the director says with a laugh. 

"We haven’t started casting yet so I have no idea who will appear in this film. In fact, the characters are still taking shape in my head, so I don’t really know who will be in it yet. We’ll cast whoever are the best people available for the parts. I can already tell you that the plan is to have two “name stars” in the film, and there are a couple of leading man-type roles, a couple of leading lady-type roles, and at least one older character actor-type role. It’s a big cast and an epic story, so I think casting will be very interesting and a lot of fun. In fact, I’m hoping that’s what the whole production will be like." 

As for whether BATTLESHIPS will also feature American forces battling extraterrestrials like it's big budget competitor, Thunder Levin coyly responds "Just as the U.S. government has always carefully avoided the issue of alien life, so must The Asylum. At least for now."

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