QLD U$100m Battleship movie sunk by Louisiana

Universal Pictures has decided not to shoot its U$150m movie adaptation of the Hasbro board game Battleship in Queensland, taking production to the US state of Louisiana instead.

A Gold Coast industry source told Encore that “a number of companies were holding our breath for Battleship, but it went to Louisiana due to federal rebate issues. Screen Queensland did a great job trying to get it here; they’d been working on it for the last six months or so, but at the end it was the federal rebate that let us all down”.

The film will be directed by Peter Berg, and tells the story of a fleet of five ships that comes across a group of aliens sailing in black ships, building a mysterious power source. Battleship was expected to complement its Gold Coast shoot with production in Hawaii during the northern hemisphere summer. The release date is set as July 29, 2011.

It is the second high budget project that Australia loses to Louisiana, following last year’s Warner production Green Lantern, which was set to shoot in Sydney.