Who knows when we might finally see a big screen adaptation of Orson Scott Card‘s sci-fi novel Ender’s Game. Hollywood has been trying to bring the sci-fi property to the big screen for the last decade, first with German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm) set to direct based on a screenplay by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and just recently it was announced that Gavin Hood (Wolverine) has come aboard the project as both writer and director.
But you don’t have to wait years to see what an Ender’s Game movie might look like, as a fan has edited together a trailer using imovie. Steven Davis used clips from Star Trek, Star Wars episodes I and II, Starship Troopers, Serenity, Soldier, Tron: Legacy, and Trailers for Halo: Reach, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Live Free or Die Hard, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, set against the backdrop of “5th Wheel Music – A Hero Emerges”. Hit the jump to watch the trailer now.
Read More »
.
Please Recommend /Film on Facebook
If you are reading this site and haven’t read Ender’s Game, you should go out and do that right now. Seriously. I mean, it’s a precursor to so many books, video games and movies that we cover it would be futile to try and list them all. Unfortunately, though, this seminal work has always had a tough time finding its legs in Hollywood. But there’s a chance that might be changing.
Ender’s Game, an award winning 1985 sci-fi novel by Orson Scott Card is the story of a a boy nicknamed Ender who, at a very young age, is chosen to go into space for Battle School. Battle School is a place where adults train gifted children to be military leaders for an imminent war using zero gravity war games, interactive digital simulations and a whole bunch of cold-blooded precision and aggression. Wolfgang Petersen was attached to direct a film version for several years before that finally died and now it seems Gavin Hood, the director of Tsotsi and X-Men Origins: Wolverine has rewritten a script that Card himself wrote and is developing the project to direct. Hit the jump for more. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 by David Chen
When we last heard about the Ender’s Game movie, it wasn’t exactly great news: Wolfgang Peterson was reportedly off the project in April 2008. Now comes word from the LA Times (via Chud and Firstshowing) that the movie won’t be happening at all. In a profile to help card promote the November release of his new book, Ender in Exile, the Times offhandedly revealed that the movie project was terminated in November 2008. According to Card he “was not interested in a ‘tough-hero action film’ and refuses to condescend to green-screen Hollywood. Card imagines a ‘film where the human relationships are absolutely essential — an honest presentation of the story.’”
I’m honestly not too saddened by this news. Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game was one of my favorite books in high school, and probably still remains my favorite science fiction story of all time. If I read it today, I might find that time has changed my opinion, but from what I remember, it had touching moments about the struggles of adolescence and precociousness, while simultaneously weaving in a thrilling tale of alien invasion. Capturing all of these elements in a successful film, while retaining the book’s spirit, would have been a daunting challenge to say the least. In fact, according to the LA Times article, Card has struggled with a film adaptation of Ender’s Game for two decades. Maybe some books are just “unfilmable.”
Discuss: Do you still want to see an Ender’s Game film one day?
German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm) is no longer set to direct an adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi novel Ender’s Game. io9 reports that the production, which is now hoping to shoot by early 2009, is on the hunt for a new director. Endger’s Game was originally slated to be released this year. Orson Scott Card is still working hard to tighten the screenplay, while producers narrow down their potential directors short list. The adaptation requires an extended pre-production due to the many visual effects involved, so the earlier the better.
Here is the plot description from the book jacket: In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut-young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.
Cool Posts From Around the Web:
