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.”
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.
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.