In the barmy world of Hollywood, your childhood boardgames are ripe for movie adaptation - and one of them has just moved closer to release, with the news that Universal and Peter Berg have set a date for Battleships, which is due in cinemas on July 1, 2011.

Battleships will, says Berg, involve "a contemporary story of an international five-ship fleet engaged in a very dynamic, violent and intense battle". Who they're fighting we don't know - we're guessing that they'll invent a fictional baddie country rather than risk charges of xenophobia. That, or they'll create some giant misunderstanding that gets sorted out before the end.

Of course, we already knew that the film was on the cards, but this news makes clear that it's the next project on Berg's crowded slate. He'll make this one, and then in a sort of one-for-us, one-for-you deal with Universal, they'll fund his planned war drama Lone Survivor, about a team of Navy SEALS who are ambushed in Afghanistan. Only after that will he start looking at Dune and Hancock 2, we're told - which is perhaps surprising, with the cast for the latter already eager to return. Still, let's hope that self-confessed Navy geek Berg can come up with a Battleships that resurrects the largely-dead maritime adventure movie instead.