It’s no secret that Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is one
of my 5 favourite books of all time. It’s also one of those books that sounds
frankly ridiculous and simple if you try to describe it, so over the years I’ve
either just lent people my copy of the novel of encouraged them to seek it out
if they aren’t in my physical sphere of influence. In over 20 years I haven’t
had a single person come back anything other than thrilled by the book, so,
once again, if you haven’t read it, I really suggest that you do, it is
excellent. A great many stories, including The Hunger Games, could trace their
ancestry through this story.
Asa Butterfield in Martin Scorsese's Hugo |
The basic plot of the film revolves around a military
training camp in space where the best of Earth’s children are being
trained in military combat, training and
tactic in a desperate attempt to find an ‘Alexander The Great, Julius Caesar,
Nelson type military genius. Earth has survived an alien Invasion, by an enormous
combination of good fortune and ‘the one right guy in the right place at the
right time’. But the aliens will be returning and in greater force; it is a
battle the human race has no chance of winning on ‘equal’ terms unless they can
find a person, or group of people, on a par with the greatest military geniuses
of all time. To that end children have been ‘monitored’ for signs of genius
level intellect AND a propensity for violence / strategic thinking. Children that
are viable candidates get shipped off to a space station for a combination of
education in war ad a series of games designed to both test and fine tune their
military prowess. Again, I know this doesn't read that well, but it is very
much worth a read.
It seems that no book worth filming doesn’t come with a tale
about years and years of aborted attempts to bring it to screen. I remember “speaking”
to Card about the film way back in 2002, where he confirmed that a film of the
story was best served as a combination of the 2 separate novels Ender’s Game
and Ender’s Shadow. As he said then “My point was that no matter what happens with the movie, my books will
still exist, and the movie will not erase them. Meanwhile, we have a
creative team assembled - including the Warner executives involved - who all
want the same thing I want - an excellent Ender's Game movie - and are all
agreed on the same fundamental storyline combining the core story elements of
Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.”
The Ender series of books continues to be adapted by Marvel Comics |
Asa Butterfield is currently most famous for his roles in ‘The
Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas’ and 'Nanny McPhee & The Big Bang', but that will change over the
coming weeks as he is the star of Martin Scorsese’s ‘children’s’ 3D film ‘Hugo’.
He hasn’t accepted the role yet, but he’s a fantastic young actor and I happen
to hope he takes the part.
The film is being produced by Robert Kurtzman & Bob
Orci, the writing team behind J J Abrams’ Star Trek films, Transformers and
Fringe. It is to be directed by Gavin Hood. Now that appointment will send
shudders down the spine of some, because
they didn’t like X-Men Origins: Wolverine; but they should remember that, even
if they don’t like that film (and millions did), Hood got the job as director of
Origins because of his multi award nominated work as director of Tsotsi; and he
has been nominated for other films too.
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