Director Admits: OK, Battleship 'Didn't Work'

It's not often that directors publicly admit that a movie was a mess, but that's what Peter Berg did yesterday at a Producers Guild conference. Speaking at a panel called "Passion Projects: Making Films Everyone Says Will Never Get Made," Berg took a moment to acknowledge Battleship's grisly box-office take. "I have a movie in theaters right now which has obviously underperformed in many ways," he said, according to the Wrap. "When [a movie] doesn't work it's … an interesting opportunity to look at what went wrong."

Berg said he hadn't been able to make the movie personal enough. "It was a movie that I tried as hard as I could to get inside of. But the concept is so big and powerful, and the money is so big and so powerful, that the movie is going to run away with itself. … It was an interesting eye-opener." Battleship sunk badly at the box office, grossing just $59.8 million domestically—which, the Huffington Post points out, is $7 million less than John Carter. (More Peter Berg stories.)