If you’re a longtime fan of Ender’s Game like me, watching hopefully and wistfully from the sidelines as the years and decades went by, you’ve probably wondered just what in the world was going on that it took nearly 30 years for NovEnder 1st to arrive. Even with my involvement as a fansite, I’ve never known exactly how it all went down and I’ve always wanted to know.
Today, Grantland’s Matt Patches posted an incredibly insightful piece documenting the long journey Ender’s Game took through the Hollywood circuit and why all the right pieces had to fall into place in order for them to make the film that I saw (and loved) just two days ago.
Ender’s Game was published in 1985. The film adaptation Hood was told would never happen arrives in theaters this week. What happened in between makes Ender’s Game a rare Hollywood miracle. Sifting through the timeline, Card’s cynicism had merit — Hood wasn’t the first guy to try his hand at adapting the sci-fi book into a blockbuster. He wasn’t even the fifth. Producers and studios have been trying ever since Card’s book was published.
The piece then goes on to describe all the reasons why it never worked out in the end with studios, directors, producers, writers, and executives. They even had D.B. Weiss and David Benioff working on it at one point!
In May 2002, Chartoff made a deal with Warner Bros. to finance and release Ender’s Game. Almost instantly, their team found “the guy”: Wolfgang Petersen, just off his hit adaptation of The Perfect Storm. Warner Bros. hoped to combine Ender’s Game andEnder’s Shadow into one film. At first, Card was the intended screenwriter, but as time passed and Petersen took on one film (2004’s Troy) and then another (2006’s Poseidon), Petersen’s interest waned. Other writers were brought onboard to stoke that interest: Hot off X2 in 2004, Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty took a first pass at adapting the book. Then in 2005, future Game of Thrones writer-producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff (also a writer of Troy) worked with Petersen to develop another take. Two years later, Card announced he was taking over scripting duties once again.
Patches continues to document Card’s involvement and frustration over the development and writing process and just when Card had basically given up, things finally began to come together.
When Gavin Hood told Orson Scott Card that he planned to adapt Card’s science-fiction classic Ender’s Game for the big screen, the author replied with a familiar refrain: “Good luck, kid.” Card was done trying to bring his book to the screen. If someone else wanted to spend years of his life spinning in circles, so be it. But before removing himself from the development process, he left Hood with a bit of wisdom, one the director would hear over and over again throughout his journey: Ender’s Game was an utterly unfilmable book.
The second half of the article gives fans an incredible look into how OddLot founder Gigi Pritzker assembled her team of “Ender’s Game Avengers” including Bob Orci, Gavin Hood, and eventually star Asa Butterfield.
With the reset button pressed and Card all but out of the picture, Pritzker and OddLot set out to find a team that understood the treasured tome. The key was finding a writer-director who could build the movie from the ground up and carry it to the end, their very own Ender. Pritzker found him in Hood, a South African filmmaker who brought his memories of apartheid and life in the military to the project. After a turbulent experience on the ill-fated X-Men Origins: Wolverine, where multiple writers tinkered with the script on a daily basis in the middle of shooting, Hood craved the immersion required for Ender’s Game. He had a vision: a script that would allow a preteen actor to engage with challenging, emotionally raw material. That was all Pritzker needed to hear.
Still missing was Hendee’s keystone, a fan who grew up with the novel, a person who would flock to the movie if they weren’t involved. Essentially, a visible champion and guide. They found him in writer Roberto Orci (Transformers, Star Trek), who boarded the movie as a producer after regaling Pritzker with his memories of reading Ender’s Game at 12 years old. Orci became the movie’s Card proxy — a devout fan without a preservationist instinct. When the team felt it couldn’t make changes to aspects of the book, Orci would say, “Sure we can — I’m the guy who blew up Vulcan! I know what we can do and can’t do.”
[…]
Genuine support begat money begat production on a real-life movie, the kind that needed a cast and crew and cameras and sets and lighting and props and wasn’t just a promise forwarded around in email. There were more hurdles to jump; finding an Ender was always a frightening prospect for Hood.
“We had a script, we were hoping to make it, but no one was going to green-light us until the right kid was onboard,” he said. The director auditioned hundreds of boy leads for the role, some as young as 8 years old, before landing on Hugo’s Asa Butterfield.
People say all the time that things happen for a reason and with Ender’s Game, that certainly seems to apply. Having seen the film and loved what they did while still staying ultimately loyal to the story, I’m genuinely glad that this is what it took for it to finally be in theaters.
Watch an official preview of Ender’s Game called ‘The 28-Year Journey’ featuring new footage from the film and soundbites from Gavin Hood, Bob Orci, and Gigi Pritzker.
Before returning to London, Asa Butterfield made an appearance on Conan. Watch the videos below!
He talks about being introduced as “Assa” and about how the legend of In-and-Out burgers didn’t quite live up to expectations. He then gives Conan a UK cussing lesson.
In this second clip, he describes a rather amazing self-injury he sustained when he played rugby and then talks about Ender’s Game. The clip shown is the Ice Battle scene. (which I can now confirm is cut from different parts of the movie)
Lionsgate/Summit has issued a press release announcing a unique opportunity for Ender’s Game fans to order custom 3D replicas of various ships from the Ender’s Game movie.
For the First Time Fans Will Be Able To Customize and Print Their Own 3D Replicas From Summit Entertainment’s ENDER’S GAME
App by Sandboxr Available for Download Prior to Theatrical Release
Salt Lake City, Utah, October 29, 2013 – Sandboxr, a 3D print and software development company from Utah, announced today its 3D print creation app for Summit Entertainment’s ENDER’S GAME. Sandboxr’s 3D print creation app has been in development for the past two years, and through the ENDER’S GAME-licensed version, fans will be able to create and bring home exclusive replica battleships from the film generated by cutting-edge three-dimensional printing technology. Fans will be able to check out the ENDER’S GAME 3D printing experience at Sandboxr.combefore Thursday’s release of the movie in theatres and IMAX October 31 at 8pm. Summit Entertainment is a LIONSGATE® (NYSE: LGF) company.
Nancy Kirkpatrick, Summit’s President of Worldwide Marketing, said, “This is the first 3D experience of this type to coincide with a major cinematic movie release, and Summit is excited to work with Sandboxr to offer this amazing experience and great new technology to our ENDER’S GAME fans.”
At Sandboxr.com, fans of ENDER’S GAME will be able to enjoy an interactive product experience that extends their engagement with the film and that they can access from their computer. Fans can choose from a selection of CG images from the movie studio file archives and bring home their own ENDER’S GAME 3D printed spacecraft and accessories.
“With an experience as sophisticated as Sandboxr’s, the challenge is to make it easy to use by the average guy or girl. 3D experiences are typically exclusive to tech savvy makers and designers. However, we’ve worked hard to make a 3D printing experience that is accessible in a meaningful way to everyone. Bringing 3D design and print technology into the hands of the ENDER’S GAME fans is a thrilling opportunity for us at Sandboxr,” says Berkley Frei, Sandboxr CEO.
To experience the app for yourself log onto sandboxr.com and follow the links to ENDER’S GAME.
View more samples here:
I headed over to Sandboxr to take a look at their app and it’s pretty cool. Once you install it, you can customize your printing by choosing a base.
Once you add parts to your Parts List (add a base and a ship), you can move on to Color.
Once on the color screen you can choose the army logo you want on the base and set all the colors of the base for various parts.
Once you’ve set everything how you want it, you go to Print, where you place your order. The site says to allow 3-6 weeks for printing and delivery.
Review by EnderWiggin.net founder Crystal Watanabe
Yesterday I had the amazing pleasure of watching the result of years of hard work by Gavin Hood and his amazing cast and crew after covering my very first red carpet premiere. For the last week I’d been half-reading reviews, scrolling through one-line Twitter reviews, and going through a hand-wringing roller coaster of anticipation and apprehension.
I’ve talked a lot with Kelly from Ender News about the mutually shared terror that we might have done all this work only to hate the movie. When I saw The Hunger Games at the world premiere last year, I left the Nokia with the dull buzz of disappointment in my head as everyone around me raved about the movie. I never really truly got over that opinion and so going into Ender’s Game, I had no illusions about the fact that I might actually end up in a moody funk at the after party.
Fortunately, I had nothing to worry about.
The Good
The first thing I have to say that it was a dream come true to watch Ender’s Game sitting next to my Ender BFF Kelly, so Summit Entertainment has my sincerest thanks for inviting us to the screening, giving us carpet access, and inviting us to hang out afterwards as well. When you share your geeky hopes and dreams about a movie for 36 weeks on a podcast, you really start to cling to the idea of experiencing the movie for the first time with that person.
The fansite girls! L-R: Ender’s Game Fandom, Ender’s Ansible, EnderWiggin.net, Ender News
Thankfully, Kelly is a movie-talker too because we were constantly leaning over to say things to each other. At one point, she whispered in my ear, “This is surprisingly good! I’m really enjoying myself!” and I could only say, “I know! Me too!”
I don’t know why we went in with so much apprehension. Perhaps it’s because we’d heard a bad vibe from Germany. Maybe it was the fact that Gavin Hood recognized us on the carpet right away and came at us like Chunk in Goonies, sure that he was in trouble because he thought we’d already seen it. Either way, we were happy and once again found ourselves on the same level of thought.
I think what surprised me the most was how light-hearted and funny the movie was. With the cast focusing their interviews on the serious aspects of the movie, it was easy to walk in assuming it was going to to be strictly saving the world business the entire time. When you get down to it though, the movie still stars kids and with kids being kids, there were quite a few laughs. There’s one particular line of Bean’s that was truly hysterical and made the whole theater crack up laughing.
I know some people hate voiceover, but with the majority of Ender’s Game taking place inside Ender’s head, Gavin Hood needed some kind of method of getting inside his head. To do this he had Asa do voiceover of emails Ender writes to Valentine. These occur throughout the film and I felt it helped to really move the story along. Without it, I think fresh viewers would have been extremely confused.
The Mind Game was beautiful, though parts of it were excised. I’d seen a lot of concept art from it in the official companion and on screen it looked great. And seriously, Gavin Hood’s giant is one of the most epic director cameos ever.
The Bad
I think Orson Scott Card summed up the bad the best when he recently spoke to a newspaper in New Zealand and said that the movie “rockets along at a breakneck pace”. The movie clocks in at under two hours, which, if I’m being honest, shocked me and so I went in expecting to feel like I was watching the movie on fast forward.
The pacing of Ender’s Game, taking off from Desert Salt Flats.
The film definitely suffered from a rushed feeling and I’d really love to see an extended version released because I really did feel like some parts could have benefited from just a couple of more minutes here and there. I had this odd feeling throughout the movie like I was seeing the movie through some weird movie version of parent goggles and that people walking into this movie without reading the book would find that while the acting, visuals, and sets were simply stunning, it was all just going too fast. But then again, perhaps the feeling of urgency is easier to accept without prior book bias.
For diehard book fans, change will probably be the hardest thing to swallow.
Since I had the chance to go to the Ender’s Game set, talk extensively with the people behind the movie, and have interacted with the cast over the last two years, I feel like I’ve been inoculated to the changes that were going to be coming at me in the movie. With that in mind, it’s possible that because of this I was more accepting of changes that may be stark and jarring for fans just hearing about the movie last month and going to the theater to see what’s up with their favorite book from high school.
Knowing as much as I did, there were more changes I did not know about and while I felt they were all necessary for the film Gavin Hood made, I think some fans will find it hard to swallow. One in particular is on the subject I’d brought up last year on the death of Stilson.
In Pondering the Fate of Stilson, I laid out why I didn’t think Stilson needed to die and why I felt like his death was too dangerous a message to send out on the big screen. Response was almost 100% against me. Everyone felt that Stilson had to die, even though I argued in discussions that since Ender didn’t know it happened until years later, it didn’t have any bearing on his development as a character.
People can argue with me until they’re blue in the face; I will never be convinced that reading about a child’s death is equal to watching a child die in a movie. The two are completely different forms of media and what a pre-teen or teen imagines while reading a scene such as Ender and Stilson’s fight will range anywhere from tame to excessively violent depending on the individual and you can’t put a fight to the death on screen and expect that wide spectrum of youth to experience a single visual vision the same way.
In the movie, it is never specifically said that Stilson or Bonzo die; their fates are left ambiguous and most moviegoers that haven’t read the book will assume that they live. This is a choice that I fully agree with. The risks the studio would have taken sending that kind of message out on the subject of bullying was not one they should be expected to take. Bullying is a serious, serious issue with today’s youth and justifying Ender’s actions that led to another child’s death would have been stepping over a line no book fan should expect to be crossed for the sake of a film adaptation. Ender lives in an extreme situation, but you can’t assume everyone will fully understand that, especially when a lot of people will see this movie without having read the book.
In the end, my advice to fans is to go in with an open mind.
One last thing that can fall into the bad category (and yet not) is the relationship between Petra and Ender. The cast, director, and producers talked a good deal about their friendship and how drawn they are together as friends, but the fact of the matter is that there is an underlying connection between the two of them that hints at something more.
From the things Petra says to Ender to the way they smile at each other while training to the mysterious way Petra sits while talking to Ender from her room on Eros, that teen love interest angle is very carefully there.
That being said, it doesn’t come across as a bad thing. These kids are, after all, at that age and to excise even a hint of young love completely would have probably felt a little too rigid and made Ender seem unrelatable to teens his own age. If Ender had been 8 having a crush on a 12 year-old Petra, then I can see there being a valid argument, but as the movie stands, what they did felt appropriate.
The Awesome
Asa Butterfield is an amazing Ender. I did catch one time where his American accent seemed to slip slightly, but other than that, I was very impressed with his performance. His smile makes you happy and sad at the same time, but when Ender is crying you get to see the emotional core of the Ender that book fans know and love. I never really felt like I was watching Asa Butterfield. I felt like I was watching Ender Wiggin.
On a similar note, I’d read criticism that Abigail Breslin is underutilized, but I was surprised at how well she pulled off the character of Valentine with practically nothing being said about how intelligent she really was. From her clothing to the way she walked and talked, she felt like Valentine to me.
Peter did not have much screen time, but Jimmy Jax Pinchak pulled off the character really well. One of my favorite Peter scenes in the book wasn’t present, but I didn’t even notice. Seeing Jimmy at the after party in a suit and tie wearing glasses was like a knock in the face. I was like, wow, the movie’s over and here’s Peter Wiggin the Hegemon! It was surreal in an amusing book nerd kind of way.
The Battle Room was grand and at one point I just wanted to blurt out, “LOOK at that Battle Room!” Graff’s hook was really cool and the way these kids hit the stars made me cringe every time. When we interviewed the kids on the carpet, we usually asked them their favorite scene and a lot of them went straight to the Battle Room. They weren’t wrong as the battles were amazing to watch in such an amazing arena.
The only drawback was that before you know it, the Battle Room scenes are over. However, when you have the director telling you that some 3 second shots cost $100,000 to produce, it puts the lack of more Battle Room into perspective. Gavin told us he did try for more, so we’ll all have to trust that the did what he could.
The impressiveness of the Battle Room aside, what amazed me the most in terms of VFX was Ender’s simulator on Eros. We were lucky enough to be able to stand on that platform that Ender stands at and it was in this gigantic green screen room. I remember standing there looking up and just being in awe over what they were going for and I wasn’t disappointed. Being a former hardcore MMO gamer, I loved the look of happy awe on Ender’s face as he saw what they’d set up for him.
In terms of writing, I loved the way Gavin wrote the final reveal to Ender. The scene that follows his last victory is sad, tragic, and emotional in all the ways you expect it to be with Asa Butterfield’s Ender. I also loved how he tied the Battle Room into the finale because it was an issue I’d always had trouble understanding with the book.
I got to talk to Gavin about it at the after party and he said the same thing: how do you explain the correlation of such rigorous physical training from the Battle Room to pure simulation, basically kids sitting on their butts playing “games” all day, in Command School? I thought how he explained that on film was a great choice in storytelling.
Overall, I thought the film was an amazing accomplishment and one kick ass ride. The cast turned out great performances and I’m proud and happy for all of the kids who stood around Ender making him who he is. Throughout the entire movie I kept thinking to myself: I have to see this again. I have to see this again. And I will.
Some fans will enjoy it, others may walk away disappointed. But what’s particularly exhilarating for me is that it’s finally here. My mother gave me this book twenty three years ago and as soon as I finished it, I could only wait for a movie to be made.
Thanks to Summit Entertainment, EnderWiggin.net has 10 passes (2 persons each pass) to give away for an advance IMAX screening of Ender’s Game tomorrow, Wednesday October 30, 2013 at Regal Dole Cannery Theatres. We are also doing a giveaway of 35 additional passes at the local Air Force base here on Oahu.
If you can make it to the screening, it will be at 7:30 pm. I just saw it yesterday and am dying to see it again!
To claim a ticket, simply email me at valentine@enderwiggin.net with the subject ENDER’S GAME IMAX HONOLULU and your full name. One pass per person. Each pass is good for two. These are being given out on a first come, first serve basis. Please do not email if you can’t make it.
I will be there, so hope to see you there to see Ender’s Game early! Winners will hear from me by tonight when I return to Honolulu!
Summit has posted a behind the scenes video detailing how Digital Domain and Audi collaborated to create the Fleet Quattro car in the movie. You can see Abigail Breslin in the car, presumably when Graff brings her to the lake.
The Huffington Post spoke with actress Andrea Powell recently and discussed her role as Theresa Wiggin and how she once stood in for Viola Davis with Harrison Ford during a table read!
What was your audition like for Ender’s Game in which you play Ender’s mom? Did you HAVE an audition?
I had an audition! And it was simultaneously wonderful and horrifying. The callback was essentially a rehearsal session with writer/director Gavin Hood, which was wonderful to work on. But by that time I wanted the role so much that I felt like every single thing I did in the audition was just grossly overacted, that I was barely better than I’d been in junior high productions, when I played the mother by spraying my hair grey. But ultimately I think I dove in very deep emotionally, connected with the character and her struggles, took Gavin’s insightful adjustments, and it just worked. That felt good, and made me a little less nervous. The callback was in New Orleans, and I remember taking my husband along and making sure that we did at least nine more interesting things in New Orleans that day, so that the callback would be the tenth most interesting thing. It was a busy day, but we accomplished it. For the audition, I just had the sides [part of the script] — the full script was locked up tight as a drum. The first time I saw it was at the table read, where I read in Viola Davis’ part opposite Harrison Ford because she couldn’t be there that day. Good thing I didn’t fully understand what was happening (truly, I was that into the script, it’s amazing) until it was over, when I looked at the scar on his chin, thought to myself, “Wow, that’s Harrison Ford,” and my stomach turned over 50 times. And Sir Ben Kingsley was sitting two chairs to my left. So yeah, just a typical Thursday.
Time has posted an exclusive infographic timeline of Ender’s Game. Although it uses movie imagery, it appears to be an infographic outlining the book timeline since Ender spends three years in Battle School before getting Dragon. We know that the movie condenses Ender’s story to about 1 year’s time. Still, it’s a pretty wicked infographic!
Harrison Ford was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night and after talking 42, failed pitches, and dodging the good ole Star Wars question, talked a bit about Ender’s Game.
Jay Leno then brought up the fact that Viola Davis revealed Harrison Ford has a dirty mind and tells lots of dirty jokes, which he tried to deny by saying she mixed him up with Ben Kingsley. After some prodding and insisting that he never told any dirty jokes around the kids, he starts to tell a really long and involved dirty joke.
Skip to the second marker for the start of his appearance and skip to the third for his Ender’s Game talk.
NPR has just debuted the song If They Move, Shoot Em by the Flaming Lips. The song is one of six tracks on an album Peace Sword inspired by Ender’s Game and is the only one of the six that will actually appear in the film.
