Thanks to Latino Review we now have a full report on what director Peter Berg is planning for his Battleship movie. It sounds wondrously epic and Independence Day terrible/awesome.

This is what we learned from Berg...

The aliens, called The Regents, came here looking for something, but they are not wholly evil bent on world domination. We did nothing to provoke them, but they still have an ecological interest in our world. Also they fire ballistics, not ray guns and will be half-CG half-"man in a suit" technology. But sadly, their ship is damaged somehow and that becomes another part of the plot:

"the enemy does come from another planet... We tried to keep it a secret, but it's our goal to make that as intelligent and logical, certainly as 'District 9' was able to do. But to provide a real intelligence to our opponent, a logic, a rationale for being there and not purely hostile, violent creatures bent on global destruction. They've got a much more logical agenda planned that happens to come into conflict with us. Then there's a chance for two relatively equal opponents to go at each other and you get a sense of some of the equipment you saw, the level and intelligence of that character of what modern sailors are today."

"There's a group of life forms from some other planet have come to our planet for something. They've got a very specific agenda. That agenda is not global domination. It's an agenda and that agenda puts them into conflict with members of our military. Their technology is relatable. It's not incredibly far out and unbeatable. It's comprehensible. Hopefully it'll make for good fun and an intense ride."

There will be a battleship-esque screen in the game similar to the movie:

"This is a key set in the film. You put this screen on, it's very easy to imagine this as a much more sophisticated Battleship screen from the board game. What they're doing with this screen is identifying threats or identifying objects whether it be in the air, on the sea or underwater. Much the same way you would try to identify or locate your enemy in the game."

And finally the film will be heavily research based when dealing with modern day Naval technology, and what happens when all of their high tech gadgets stop functioning:

"One of the things the film inspires is it takes us into this incredibly complicated world of communications, of radar, of GPS locators, of weapons systems, to show all of this state of art as cool as we possibly can. Somebody asked about backups? (If the computer systems go down) That's another thing we're going to sort of explore. Taking away some of the technology we have.... for example, you'll see there's a light out here [on the battleship the reporters were on]. This is an old fashioned Morse Code signal light. All of this state of the art technology in the world, if everything else goes, if you can't get a cell phone or walkie talkie signal, this can signal Morse code. And obviously in the game Battleship, being able to identity in the game where your enemy is, and locate and identify, is something, that is the core component of the game. Well, one of things we hope to do in this film successfully, is to take away some of this really incredible state of the art technology and have people communicating, and this is just one example, there's others, of using some sort of old-school communication."

To find out more — and there's lots more — check out Latino Review's entire report.

In an interview with SciFi Wire, Berg explained that te script isn't finished yet because they're working on making it much more epic than ever before. At least, that's what I take from this quote...

"[The book] was much more muscular and adventurous, more violent and possibly even a little bit more fun... I think those are all elements of my experience of the book that can be brought in without offending the die-hard fans of the Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach. There's a more dynamic film to be made."

Well, Lynch did have a half naked Sting. That was pretty muscular for me, but I think I understand what he's saying. Dune is one of those books where everyone has their version of the spice planet, and we're looking forward to Berg's.

In Virtuality, Siena Guillory plays Rika Goddard, the ship's exobiologist who's trapped in a passionless marraige with Roger, the ship's psychologist and producer of the fake reality TV program the ship's crew stars in. And Clea DuVall (Carnivale) plays Sue Parsons, the ship's brash pilot who's already drawing comparisons to Starbuck. Both actors went on a conference call with reporters today and talked about how they approached their characters in this TV movie (which could spawn an ongoing series). Virtuality airs this Friday night at 8 PM on Fox.

I hadn't realized, until listening to both actors, just how much of Virtuality was improvised. Apparently Peter Berg (Hancock), who directed the pilot, is a huge believer in letting actors run with their scenes and create their own interpretations of their characters.

One of the coolest parts of the pilot is Sue Parsons' relationship with some of the other female characters, especially the computer scientist and reality-TV show host Billie Kashmiri. Sue is constantly sniping at the naive, privileged Billie, but then after Billie suffers an extreme trauma inside the virtual-reality world (which feels real even though it's just VR) Sue and Billie suddenly share a moment of closeness, and they have a really intense scene together, which feels like it could be the foundation of a really interesting friendship. You don't see such complex relationships between two women in science fiction all that often.

So I asked DuVall what she thought was going on between the two women, and whether it was in the script, or improvised:

It was in the script, and also improvised. It was a combination of the two... I thought a lot about my character, because she's kind of a hardass and kind of a jerk, and a handful to deal with..and I really tried hard to understand her and why she was so guarded and so protective of herself. And [I tried to think] what it was about this girl that really ticked me off... I sort of went inside myself and tried to find the parts of myself that I don't think are there, the jealousy and the competitiveness, and I used that, I used my own personal shortcomings, to fuel this character. But then understand, but then being able to see her as human and seeing the parts of Billie that were like me.

So was Sue angry at Billie because she saw Billie as a younger version of herself? DuVall explained:

[Billie was] somebody that was given the position they were given, because they had certain advantages that I wasn't given, and that jealousy of being born into good stock. Versus having to fight tooth and nail to get there, because my character was put through the ringer so much to be there even though she was one of the most qualified.

Meanwhile, Siena Guillory says Rika Goddard "hates having her privacy invaded" (in the reality TV show) but "she's also desperate for adventure." Rika is an "introvert but oversexed," she adds. "The fact that we're geeks doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to be handling our emotions, so we're all prone to exploding emotionally."

Both actors raved about the creative freedom they were given during the shooting of this pilot. "Of course I said everything that was in the script, but being able to build on it and find things that were in there [was terrific]," says DuVall. "Them trusting us so much also gave us the confidence to trust ourselves."

"They were so brave and didn't assume that the audience was stupid," adds Guillory. "They lent us that bravery and allowed us to inhabit the roles."

And even though Virtuality is about being trapped inside a cramped spaceship, and trapped in the not-quite-real performance of reality TV, and even trapped inside virtual-reality modules that turn into a horror show, Guillory says the show, in the end, is about limitless possibilities:

It's all about the fact that the possibilities are endless, and that's what the whole show is about. There are no limitations, and everything we grew up with here on Earth, in terms of "This is your life, and this is who you are, and you will die [isn't necessarily true]. And you can be anywhere and be anyone, and anything is possible and it's incredibly dangerous and exciting.

As I mentioned, Virtuality airs this Friday at 8 PM on Fox.

Abrams has rounded up an unusual crew of actors around the main character FBI agent Olivia Warren (Anna Torv, pictured above). Joining her is a mad scientist, Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), and his Han Solo-esque son Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) who apparently is a high school drop out with a gambling problem. The gang works together to uncover the secrets behind paranormal activity, sinister corporations and flesh-melting viruses. No word on what Greg Grunberg's likely cameo will be. [Variety]

Virtuality takes place aboard the Phaeton, which just so happens to be Earth's first starship. The Phaeton is on a ten-year journey exploring the outer cosmos. In order to help the crew cope with this long mission a virtual reality (which sounds a lot like Star Trek's holodeck) is installed. Of course something goes wrong between man and machine. The two-hour pilot was written by Battlestar Gallactica's Ron Moore and Michael Taylor. [Variety]

We can only hope Fox has learned the error of its Firefly-snuffing ways. The network has killed several great science fiction shows in their infancy, but maybe the renewal of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles shows it's turning over a new leaf.

Now that Hancock director Peter Berg is officially remaking Dune, it's hard not to see his superhero romp as a bad omen. Official synopses of Hancock have portrayed it as the story of a drunken has-been superhero (Smith), who gets a press agent (Jason Bateman) but then has an affair with the agent's wife (Charlize Theron). But a rough cut of the film just screened in Texas, and attendees came out with much, much weirder plot descriptions.

According to the early reviews, Will Smith's Hancock is an immortal god, created thousands of years ago. But he's suffering from amnesia and doesn't realize his true nature. Plus he got mugged 20 years ago (when he'd lost his powers) and remains traumatized by the experience. Now he's a superhero who abuses his powers and does more harm than good.

Then Hancock saves Bateman's marketing exec, who offers to salvage his image in return. Bateman's big idea: Hancock should turn himself in and offer to go to jail for all the damage his heroics have caused, plus an underage girl he had sex with. (Apparently, when Hancock ejaculates, his sperm blasts through the roof of the trailer he lives in.) But then it turns out that Bateman's wife (Theron) is also a superhero, and is actually married to Hancock from thousands of years ago. But when Smith and Theron are together, they lose their superpowers for some reason.

When Bateman learns his wife is an all-powerful god who was created thousands of years ago to be Will Smith's perfect mate, he's somewhat distraught. Then Smith and Theron have to stop some escaped convicts, but can't get too close to each other without losing their powers. [Superhero Movie clip from MTV Movies. Hancock reviews at Ain't It Cool News.]

Arrakis, the "desert planet," full of blinding sands and barren, eye-splitting beauty, should be the star of the show. Consider, for example, how director David Lean depicted the vastness of the desert in Lawrence of Arabia. You can see two tiny figures slowly making their way along a dune in this clip, and only after we've absorbed the hugeness do we finally get a closeup of the humans.

John Ford's The Searchers, a movie about a posse of men (led by John Wayne) searching for a woman kidnapped by Natives in the Old West, was filmed on location in Utah and Arizona's Monument Valley. It's an epic set in another kind of desert — one full of vast, eroded rocks and huge, haunting pillars carved by wind. It's the kind of place you might easily find on Arrakis, and should serve as a model for Berg. Notice how the landscape swallows up the people, providing a frame and a sense of power.

What Berg should also absorb from these filmmakers is their sense for character-driven drama that takes place within an action-packed war zone. There are fights and spilled blood aplenty in both Lawrence of Arabia and The Searchers, but what people remember about both films are the intense characters that drive the stories. We know that Berg can make a war movie, and that he gets the fact that there's a parallel between Middle Eastern politics and science fiction. (See clip from The Kingdom, below, with the weird reference to Saudi Arabia being "like Mars.")

But can Berg make the transition from an interior-heavy flick like The Kingdom, where the Mars-Saudi Arabia parallel borders on xenophobia, to a film set in wide-open spaces where the desert terrorists are the romantic heroes? Remember, if you want to read Dune as an allegory about the Middle East (and you should), the heroes are the guys who live in caves and bomb the shit out of the developed-world imperialists who've come to suck up their spice.

So Berg's got a lot on his plate if he wants to make a truly kickass Dune worthy of the epic sweep of the novels. He needs to learn how landscape on film can speak for itself. And he also needs to give us a desert people full of heroes and justice-seekers rather than the alien villains of The Kingdom.

Image of Monument Valley by Duane Shoffner.

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• The Russian trailer for Cloverfield showcases some previously unseen sequences of soldiers fighting the monster, plus women with fake sweat on their chests. [BloodyDisgusting]
• Similarly, new clips from Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem show battle scenes in a sewer, a hospital and a pool party, plus a soldier doing the whole "you go on without me" martyr dance. [IESB]
• Coming (eventually) in Heroes: more of "badass" future Hiro, Hiro's dad's secret powers, the long-promised Jessica Collins super-spy, and a cop and crimelord in New Orleans. Oh, and Monica will dress up as Saint Joan, that cheesy comic book character, more often. [Ohnotheydidnt]
• Screencaps from the Torchwood season two trailer reveal Martha Jones in bondage! [FreemaAgyeman]
• The new KITT from the Knight Rider relaunch has all-wheel drive, laser weapons, a "mini-KITT drone" and other features that the original lacked. But no grappling hook. [Popular Mechanics, via SFSignal]
• Chuck has two more episodes in the can, which reveal more backstory on Adam Baldwin's character. [SpoilerTV]