Before X-Men Origins: Wolverine, we didn’t know much about Taylor Kitsch, and even since his turn as the Southern gambling mutant, Gambit, we haven’t seen him often. But what Kitsch has done since then, is set himself up for some major stardom.

It’s being reported that Taylor Kitsch has been cast to star in Peter Berg‘s feature based on the popular board game, Battleship, in which players strategically place their fleet of ships, and then proceed to fire back and forth at each other until someone’s fleet has been completely submerged. The project is one of a handful of currently in-development films based on Hasbro games and toys.

Aside from his theatrical breakout in Wolverine, Kitsch has mainly been busy as a regular on the hit show Friday Night Lights, which was actually developed by Berg. With that show set to end after its fifth season, other opportunities have begun flowing in steadily. The first big casting that he grabbed was the lead in Pixar alum Andrew Stanton’s much-buzzed science fiction adventure, John Carter of Mars, which many expect to be huge. With the addition of Battleship to his schedule, the sky’s the limit.

The strange thing about this report, is that there’s apparently a hell of a lot more going on in Battleship than we once thought. Naturally, we all just assumed that it would be a naval action/drama along the lines of Crimson Tide, Hunt for the Red October, or maybe even Down Periscope, right?

Berg even shared his passion for a naval film when he was hired:

Nope, not even close. Apparently the movie, written by Jon and Erich Hoeber, will deal with an “alien invasion” in which an international ship fleet having to “battle a water-bound armada of otherworldly origin.”

Didn’t see that coming, did you? Feels a lot like a late April Fools joke, but this does not appear to be the case.

According to /Film, the aliens are called The Regents, and they’re not here to fight, but seek a new power source from our own oceans. This leads to their confrontation with the naval fleet. Apparently the movie will also tell a dual-story from both the human and alien perspectives. Kind of like Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, but with Battleship…and aliens.

In February, The Hurt Locker star Jeremy Renner was actually in talks to take this role in Battleship, but ultimately had to decline, possibly for his role James McTeigue’s The Raven.

[Source: Heat Vision]