Hi folks,
looks like we are going to keep finding these little gems from Comic Con for a while. Here is an awesome interview Screen Rant did with Gavin Hood. He speaks about how he personally relates to the story of Ender, what Space Camp did for the kids and the filming process, how they deal with Ender realizing that “the enemy’s gate is down,” and Hood’s opinion on Orson Scott Card and his views on gay marriage.
Source: Screen Rant
This week’s cast watch mostly revolves around yesterday’s Variety Power of Youth event. Abigail Breslin was honored as one of five young performers for her involvement in Project Sunshine, a charity for children with disabilities, HIV and other special needs. Here is Abigail with her co-honorees Jake Austin, Quvenzhane Wallis, Nina Dobrev and Tyler Posey.
At the event, Abigail met up with her August: Osage County costar Dermot Mulroney …
… and probably with some of her Ender’s Game buddies, because it seems that Aramis Knight and Khylin Rhambo were also in attendance. Khylin tweeted this “epic” picture of himself with Percy Jackson‘s Brandon T. Jackson and The Maze Runner‘s Dexter Darden.
Aramis met up with some friends and then posed with Tyler Posey (pun intended), tweeting: “Everyone thinks I look like this guy.” I wonder why everyone thinks that … oh wait, BECAUSE YOU DO!
Apparently, Abigail Breslin played matchmaker for Aramis Knight at some point around the time of the event. Hmm, very cryptic.
In other news:
Abigail Breslin did a photoshoot with The Icon Magazine. Looks amazing.
Asa Butterfield is shooting a new movie, modding Skyrim, and letting himself be stung in the lip by wasps. (I’m still waiting for photos.) Hailee Steinfeld is seeing Bruno Mars tonight. And the Jimmy Jax Pinchak Band just started playing at the Venice Beach Summer Fest 2013. Check their WEBSITE for upcoming gigs.
PS: If you are at Venice Beach right now, Jimmy is signing a limited number of Ender’s Game posters after the gig!
Sources: Variety; Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
While Comic Con can be described as amazing and fun, it’s also crazy and hectic. On Saturday, after meeting some of the cast of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire I headed over to Poppin’ Some Tags where the Costume Designers Guild was holding a panel with designers from various movies, including Ender’s Game.
After the panel, Ender’s Game costume designer Christine Bieselin-Clark was able to squeeze in a few minutes with me, which we ended up doing as we walked to her autograph session in Sails Pavilion. It was different and fun and a real pleasure to talk with her.
What did you look to for inspiration for Ender’s Game?
It’s a military world. It’s a very structured society that we’re living in […] but it’s an international military force, so I looked at tons and tons of military uniforms from all countries, all time periods, just looking for things that kind of spoke to us, that gave the audience the feeling that this was an international association of authority.
That’s got to be intimidating, it’s planet-wide.
Oh yeah! And so you don’t it to be American military. You want it to feel like it has some sensibilities of an international feeling so we did a ton of research on uniforms just across the board. And then that’s the world, but then we go to the whole flash suit thing and that was… we looked at so much stuff for reference. We looked at the usual suspects of motorcross, but you have to look at references of what you don’t want to do and a lot of motorcross stuff, a lot of athletic things, tons and tons of other suits from other films cause you also don’t want to be repetitive, you need it to be unique. But I think the whole thing with the flash suit was to try to make something that seemed purposeful to what the storyline was and take pieces from the book that informed what that should look like and then just do a lot of research on existing kind of protective gear across the board.
You mentioned in the panel that doing TRON was helpful for you, but was it also a hindrance because you didn’t want to copy it?
Well, I think it’s always kind of good to have done a movie you don’t want to copy cause then you won’t copy yourself, so I feel like I learned a lot on TRON about processes of costume making and special effects costuming. That really helped us make very successful suits on Ender’s Game that I think perhaps another designer who might not have had as much practical experience would have had a more difficult time because it’s not only to make something that looks beautiful when he’s standing still, these are suits that go into zero g and everyone’s wearing them, background kids, and so I feel like the experience on TRON really helped me as far as function goes and how to make things really work while they’re looking good.
They talk a lot about how hard it was to work in the wires and stuff so how do you wash those flash suits?
We have all kinds of special creepy techniques. Basically everybody wears something underneath that we can launder. So we used a lot of under armour and sports gear underneath that’s like skin-tight.
Oh, so they were double layered then!
Oh yeah! Oh, yeah! And so then that can be washed every day and sometimes we’d even change that out at lunch time. Sometimes you would wear one in the morning and one in the afternoon and then the suits themselves we just disinfected every day. And I can’t tell you all the secrets behind that, but sometimes we used vodka. For real. It’s an old costuming trick, you mix vodka with water and you put it in spray bottles, it kills all the germs.
You said Gavin was very open to your ideas, could you briefly describe your creative process for Ender’s Game with him?
I have worked with him previously. I was the assistant designer on Rendition and the assistant designer on Wolverine for a short time, so had a relationship with him already where I think we trusted each other even from the get-go. And I think that he knew that I could help guide this process and I think he had a lot of trust for me which I couldn’t have been more appreciative for.
It helps that he’s super nice.
He is so nice. Gavin’s one of those people who has these very distinct ideas and a lot of thoughts about what he wants to do, but he’s extremely encouraging of you to contribute your ideas so we talked a lot in adjectives and adverbs and descriptive words about how we wanted things to feel or come across, but how we got there was open for discussion, negotiation. So that was kind of the process with him as we would say, “Oh, we want this to feel this way.” and then I go away and I cook some stuff up and be like, “Hey, does that feel like that to you?” and then that would help drive the process.
So are you a fan of science fiction outside your work?
It’s funny, I never was. I used to say it’s funny I keep designing these films that I would never really go see. But in designing them and then becoming a part of this world and this fanbase, I have a lot of reverence for it. I have a lot of respect for the fans that come to this and have such a love for it and it’s been a real adventure and now I have to say I’m a sci-fi girl. I never thought I would say that, but I am.
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In an upcoming episode of EnderCast, Aramis Knight, who plays Bean, tells us a bit more about those layers they had to wear, so be sure to keep an eye out for that! Our sincerest thanks to Christine for taking time out of her schedule to talk to us!
Since we are posting new stills today, check out this picture of Ender and Graff showing them shortly before Ender enters the battle room.
This image appeared in the special Comic Con edition being handed out in the San Diego Gaslamp Quarter during Comic Con.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
I know the quality sucks a bit, and we’ll try to get a better quality one as soon as possible, but we didn’t want to keep this from you. This is the first time we’ve seen Ender and Alai together in character in the movie! The picture was taken quasi by accident by the folks of Collider, who actually just wanted a photograph of the Ender’s Game Experience classroom desks. Be that as it may, this is proof that Ender and Alai’s friendship is acknowledged in the movie!
Source: Collider
Last week was pretty much all about Comic Con, and apart from Moises Arias and Abigail Breslin (who was sick and had to cancel only a day before she was scheduled to be on the panel) pretty much every one of the young cast was there. You have probably already seen tons of stuff, but in case you still haven’t had enough, have some more!
To start off, Cameron Gaskins (Pol Slattery) posted an awesome group pic of the minor cast hanging out together after signing autographs for an hour on Saturday.
As I said, pretty much everyone was there.
After the signing, the cast member went around a bit at Comic Con, doing their own thing. Khylin Rhambo‘s thing, it seems, is taking pictures with random cosplayers. I see Batman-girl, Iron Man, and Spidey, and is that Assassin’s Creed? I’m not much of a gamer, so you have to tell me.
Aramis Knight, on the other hand, signed more autographs while he was at it. Someone you don’t see in the group pic, but who was there at the singning as well, is Jimmy Pinchak. He took the time to visit the Ender’s Game Experience, signing up under the name of Peter Wiggin. Looks like Peter made it into battle school after all.
The rest of the cast eventually went to the Experience as well. Aramis Knight met up with Asa Butterfield to reenact the launchie shuttle experience. I kind of doubt, though, that this is what it will look like in the movie.
Speaking of Asa Butterfield, he seems to have enjoyed Comic Con to the fullest. However, in this pic, taken on their first day, he and Hailee Steinfeld seem to still be confused about what’s what at SDCC.
I’m not sure whether this was taken before or after Asa and Hailee did the Ender’s Game Experience press preview, of which you’ve probably seen loads of images. Maybe you’ve even seen that awesome vid in which they walk through the sets, and in which Asa delivers his by now Tumblr-famous line “like a banana.” Wednesday night, he, Hailee and a few others attended a party organized by Summit. Here’s proof:
Yeah, selfies are never quite what you expect them to be. At least they had fun before they had to get back to Hall H-paneling, Interview-giving, photoshoot-posing and all those other tedious things that I’m sure are a big hassle.
After a few days of hard work, Asa got to spend his last day at Comic Con undercover, finally being allowed to release his inner nerd and hang out with the REALLY cool people.
Sources: the stars’ Twitter and Instagram accounts
Here’s our video interview with producer Bob Orci and Gavin Hood outside the Ender’s Game Experience.
Gavin did talk to us a lot more about Ender and Bonzo after we’d turned off the camera, so Liz will have to help provide us some of those bits with the notes she took afterwards.
To provide some context on why this is so short, we weren’t even aware we’d be able to do this, so we had nothing to ask. We stood at the very end of the press line and they seemed anxious to leave, with their press people saying we could only talk to Gavin. So when our time came we had really only came up with two things to ask them since we didn’t want to be rude. However, they seemed more than happy to talk to us further, so Liz and I would like to thank them for that.
In the future I’ll definitely make sure to have lots of things to ask at the ready for emergencies such as these. 😉
Hey Launchies, Crystal from Enderwiggin.net and Kelly from EnderNews.com were on a roll during Comic Con. After Episode 22 was posted only days ago, we now get Episode 23 – Ender’s Bullies. Listen to our hosts talk to Caleb Thaggard, who plays Ender’s primary school bully Stilson, and Conor Carroll, who plays Bernard, Ender’s launch group nemesis. You won’t believe how absolutely nice these two baddies are!
Bernard and Stilson chat about
Check out the entire episode HERE!
Image Source: EnderNews
Greetings Enderites!
If you, like me, had to miss out on Comic Con, here comes the podcast that will make you regret it not quite so much: Episode 22 – Launchies in Line. In the first part of the podcast, Crystal from EnderWiggin.net and Kelly from Ender News are waiting in line in front of Hall H to experience the Ender’s Game panel on Thursday, July 18, where they are joined by EnderNews staffer Aidan and long term devoted fan Hannah! In the second part of the podcast, Crystal and Kelly recap the Thursday panel, among other things.
Topics include:
Listen to the episode HERE!
I have seriously been going bananas these last two days trying to upload these photos with spotty wi-fi, terrible wi-fi, and then a really wonky site on a really bad shared server with GoDaddy.
They’re late, but they’re finally up. I’ve still got more because two rooms into the Experience my memory card became corrupted, so I have to try to rescue them off that camera somehow! Plus, Liz has photos too.
The photos might be a bit out of order because I kept going back and taking more pictures. Nonetheless, hope you guys enjoy!
In these photos: Crystal Watanabe, Liz Spencer, and Hannah Craswell
by Elizabeth Spencer
Ho, Launchies! Crystal and I have just returned home after an absolutely fantastic (if exhausting) five days at San Diego Comic-Con! We had a marvelous time exploring the sights and sounds of one of the coolest places around… We posed with Jedi, sat in the Iron Throne, explored a replica of Bag End made entirely of Legos, and one night were ushered into a bunker to stock up on supplies for the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Oh, wait. That was just me. Crystal spent her whole trip camped out for Hall H.
And oh yeah, we also did a bunch of stuff for “Ender’s Game.” It’s been a busy few days, so our apologies for the late reporting!
On Thursday, July 18, I had the privilege of sitting down to a roundtable discussion with “Ender’s Game” Writer/Director Gavin Hood, Producer Roberto Orci, Ender Wiggin-actor Asa Butterfield, and Petra Arkanian-actress Hailee Steinfeld. Also in attendance were Kelly and Aidan (from Ender News) and Cassandra (from Ender’s Ansible).
The four of us had an awesome opportunity to get right down to it and ask the questions that real fans want answered. So here I present to you our biggest takeaways:
1) The New Trailer! Yes, there’s a new trailer, and for those of us who didn’t get to see it during the Hall H panel, it will be released to the public with the premiere of “Elysium,” due to hit theaters on August 9th. There’s a chance that it may also hit the internet a few days prior, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled!
2) Sequels! Everyone’s being pretty tight-lipped about possible sequels right now, and for good reason. As Gavin reminds us, “There’s a large amount of money at stake and we would need the approval of the studio.” Gavin and Bob are all for it, but couldn’t speak to possible plots or timeframes. The fact that this first adaptation even made it off the ground was miracle enough. As Gavin said, “This property is something that people wanted to make for a long time and didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, and so I think everybody is a little bit in shock that we actually made it.” So no news for now, but we’ll keep our ears to the ground.
3) Locke and Demosthenes – Gone for Good. Gavin spoke about cutting the Locke and Demosthenes sub-plot, a matter of contention among some fans: “The main decision that we made is that we would stick with Ender Wiggin, never do a scene without him. Any scene that happened without him, the only ones we chose to do were a couple of scenes with Graff and Anderson where they talk about him, so that the audience is truly on Ender’s journey in order to bond you visually and cinematically with this lead character and identify with him.”
This makes perfect sense for a two-hour movie, and while some fans may be upset that this story line doesn’t make it to the screen, we think it was the right move on the writer’s part. While Peter and Valentine are obviously central figures to the plot, it is because they form a foundation for Ender’s own journey, and their activities outside of Ender’s world don’t serve to advance the story that Gavin wants to tell. Now if we ever do get those sequels, they might have to fit in a bit of, “Meanwhile, back on Earth…”
4) On Violence: Gavin and Bob answered a few questions regarding the level of violence that they adapted from book to screen. Those who have read the book know that there are several severely violent actions that are vital to the development of Ender’s character and the progression of his journey.
To avoid spoilers, we won’t go into specific details here. But from what we heard, it sounds like the team found a good balance between showing the seriousness of the act without dragging it out for the sake of spectacle. As Gavin Hood explained: “We’re walking a very fine line in a PG-13 world…you can’t have an “R” movie where half the people who love the book can’t see the movie, and yet you also don’t want to soften it up… We never wanted to indulge the violence for the sake of violence. We wanted the violence to happen, for you to feel the shock of it in a real way, but more importantly for you to deal with the aftermath of the violence…”
The most important thing, he said, was to show what effect the violence had on the characters (specifically Ender) and how the impact of that violence carried across in their reactions. Gavin spoke several times throughout the interview about the abilities of all the actors to portray subtle, emotional, and nuanced performances, helping to convey the depth of what is largely an internal struggle that takes place in Ender’s own mind. We can’t wait to see how these scenes play out on film.
5) Why Not Reading The Book Might Be A Good Thing: For fans of any book-to-screen adaptation, it can be hard to imagine that someone would take on a movie role without having read the source material. We know that Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld both read the novel, but other actors (such as Harrison Ford and Viola Davis) did not. When asked about how this affected their understanding of the characters, Gavin stood firmly behind the script’s ability to provide all that was necessary for the actors to comprehend their roles and motivations.
In fact, he said, not reading the book can sometimes be a good thing: “Their feeling was that to engage in conversations about scenes that are not in the movie isn’t helpful. They need to know that what’s on that page in the script, which is going to be on screen, is going to have sufficient weight and substance and merit to give them fully-rounded characters in the movie […] There’s a lot of actors who don’t want to read books, some do – these guys (indicating Asa and Hailee) used the book as a form of research, and fantastically so. Other actors say, ‘Wait a minute – we’re not making the book. You’re asking me to play the role based on the script. This script better have enough substance and weight and nuance for me to feel that my character is going to be nuanced.’
And that was their approach, which I think is absolutely fine.”
6) Ender and Petra…In Love? Our group went ahead and asked the big question that’s had many fans worried over the last few weeks. Ever since photos were released showing Ender and Petra holding hands, as well as Petra grasping Ender’s arm, we have wondered about the possibility that they built a teen romance into the script. Say it isn’t so!
While the answers we received from Gavin, Bob, Asa, and Hailee all point to a platonic relationship, there’s still a little doubt in my mind about how much teen angst will actually show up on the screen. Asa told us that “I wouldn’t say it was anything at all like a love relationship, cause they’re both dependent on each other for support. They’re both in the same situation, they’re both not entirely accepted by the community they’re in.” Hailee also spoke about the similarities between Ender and Petra, and how there is a connection formed between them based on that outcast role and the need for acceptance.
“I think that it’s sort of expected in a way, and what’s great about the relationship between them is – not only did I not really see it as sort of a romance thing, but I don’t think the characters do either. I think they’re looking for a friend, and somebody to trust and feel comfortable with, and that doesn’t necessarily mean boyfriend/girlfriend or whatever.”
Gavin summed it up by assuring us that “there is genuine tenderness between these two characters at certain moments, and there are genuinely sweet moments – when she teaches him how to shoot, it’s both exciting and really tender, but it’s not, ‘let’s be cute.’ None of that, no.”
7) And “Ender’s Shadow?” Also Out. Gavin Hood confirmed that there will be none of “Ender’s Shadow” in this movie – Bean’s storyline will be restricted to what is present in “Ender’s Game” and nothing more. It was hard enough, Gavin said, trying to fit as much as they could of the original novel in to a two-hour movie, and they chose early on to stick to Ender’s story alone.
And that’s just about it, folks! A few more questions were tossed around about the score and Asa’s American accent (he practiced in the shower), and we learned that they are 90-95% done with the final cut of the movie.
All in all, I’d say it was a pretty successful day. A huge thanks to Gavin, Bob, Asa, and Hailee for making time to sit down with the four of us – every time I hear them talk, I am more and more confident that this adaptation is in the right hands, and will meet our expectations and then some!
Stay tuned for some additional post- Comic-Con write-ups, and feel free to ask any questions about our time in San Diego! More pics will also be coming soon!
Producer Bob Orci sat down with What’s Trending at Nerd HQ during Comic Con to talk about the process of making Ender’s Game. He speaks about getting the movie produced, casting Harrison Ford (or rather being cast by him), aging up the kids, and shooting the movie in sequence so that Ender’s physical growth would match Asa’s. I also think he and the interviewer are having a speed talking contest.
Source: Youtube
Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld sat down with Moviefone (as did Harrison Ford) to chat a bit about what it was like to film Ender’s Game. They talk about funny moments, the professional atmosphere on set, and the pranks they all (including, it seems, the adults) played on each other while filming. And guess what: the Ender’s Game slang from the books made it into the movie!
My favorite part of the interview is Hailee’s recollection of a prank Gavin Hood played on her:
At the end of the film, one of the cast members, Moises Arias, who plays Bonzo Madrid, had to shave his hair for the ending scene. You know, it’s one of those things where you’re OK with it because you have to do it, but it’s also like, you know… it’s a big thing, right? So Moises handled it very well, but you could see he was a little, you know, taken aback by looking at himself in the mirror and this drastic change. And Asa and I walked on set and Gavin turns around and has a black eye. My heart dropped. I was like, “What just happened?” And he goes, “I told him. I told him that he could take it out on me because I made him shave his head. And I was literally, like, crying. I was like, “Moises would never do that. What’s happening?” And then they were like, “Just kidding! It’s makeup!”
Read the entire interview HERE!
Source: Moviefone