If you’ve read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, you know one of the biggest challenges for writer-director Gavin Hood was bringing the Battle Room to life.
When Ender (Asa Butterfield) is recruited by the International Fleet, he’s sent into space to Battle School to learn how to defend the planet against the Formics, an alien race that nearly decimated humanity and is expected to return. While there are classes in Battle School, the central element of the curriculum is actually a game.
While on the film’s NASA Michoud Assembly Facility set in New Orleans, producer Linda McDonough explained, “They have two different ‘gates.’ They accumulate points by hitting each other with these lasers. The lasers don’t injure you; they freeze parts of your suit. But if either team is able to get a man through the other team’s gate, they completely win the battle.” Now just picture all of that in a zero-gravity environment.
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How do you make a movie set in the future about a six-year-old recruited by the military to wipe out an invading alien race? If the answer were simple, perhaps Ender’s Game would have been adapted to film far sooner. Orson Scott Card’s novel was first published back in 1985, after which the rights sat at Warner Bros. for 12 years, the film never making it past the development stage. Finally, the rights lapsed and Linda McDonough and her producing team snatched them up to make the movie their way — independently. As she proudly points out, “We think we may be the largest independently financed film ever put together.”
We’re still well over a month away from the start of the New York Film Festival, but it’s already shaping up to be a remarkable event, going three for three in the trailer department. Just last week The Secret Life of Walter Mitty cracked the top three and now we’ve got two more NYFF entries with superb promos solidifying even more of the lineup as must-see material.
Big-screen superheroes stole much of the San Diego Comic-Con spotlight, but now more than ever, young adult book-to-film adaptations aren’t far behind. Sadly The Maze Runner only made it to Nerd HQ, but Ender’s Game, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, The Seventh Son, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire all enjoyed their own panels, interviews, press conferences, convention center floor giveaways and more.
While the widespread success of young adult book-to-film adaptations like The Twilight Saga, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games does facilitate some serious potential for a big-screen version of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, it also comes with the added pressure of ensuring that the Ender’s Game movie stands out.
Before fielding rapid-fire Q&A questions at the Ender’s Game panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld sat down and had some fun telling us how they might fare if they ever really had to compete in the Ender’s Game Battle Room.
Bummed you didn’t get to check out Battle School on the Ender’s Game set first hand? We’ve got you covered. Disappointed you didn’t make it out to San Diego for Comic-Con this year? We’ve still got you covered because not only did Movies.com get a preview of theEnder’s Game Fan Experience, but we’ve also got a video walkthrough of the facility so you can check out some of the set pieces, props and costumes for yourself.
The Twilight Saga is long gone, but six new young-adult adaptations might take its place. The San Diego Comic-Con programming schedule has arrived and Ender’s Game, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Seventh Son, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and possibly Maze Runner are due for appearances in Hall H.
It’s always a thrill to see the stars from your favorite films and be the first to check out never-before-seen footage from highly anticipated releases, but half the fun of San Diego Comic-Con is enjoying the event alongside people who are just as passionate about film, TV, comics and books as you.
As someone who didn’t love Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, the fact that The World’s Endnearly creeped into the top three definitely makes it a trailer to note, but this week brought us three other trailers that are so above and beyond that nothing else even had a shot.