Harry here missing the great meal I had with Orson Scott Card back around Thanksgiving of last year. Damn that was a calorie ridden meal. Sigh... Come here carrot... crunch crunch crunch... Ah celery my old friend, crunch crunch crunch... Hehehe, This would make one hell of a movie and Miramax doing it would be a bit weird, though I must say that Robert Rodriguez would be ace for this film. He loves working with kids, but also loves hardcore serious science fiction and film noir. However, having said that, his slate is packed at the moment. After he finishes editing ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO and SPY KIDS 2, he has his next 3 films all in place... Hmmmmmm....

Hi Harry,

I believe one of my cohorts at the philoticweb.net already emailed you with the information about Miramax's interest in the "Ender's Game" project. That information is indeed legit, it came from Scott himself. I'm writing to confirm the information, and also to bring you up to speed on where the project is now. The following is a brief summary of all the movie news that can be found in the movie section of our website, PhiloticWeb. (kindof the force.net for Ender's Game, but much smaller):

Miramax is currently interested in the project

Richard LaGravenese is working with Card on the script ("Fisher King" for those of you that don't know your writers)

Card WILL NOT work with James Cameron again, despite his glowing essay on "The Abyss" DVD/LD Card disliked what he saw of Cameron's uber-tyrannical directing style, he wants to work with someone who respects actors and the people who work for him. I believe his exact quote is "he made everyone around him miserable, and his unkindness did nothing to improve the film in any way. Nor did it motivate people to work faster or better. And unless he changes his way of working with people, I hope he never directs anything of mine. In fact, now that this is in print, I can fairly guarantee that he will never direct anything of mine. Life is too short to collaborate with selfish, cruel people." From a Barnes and noble chat in august 99.

The character of Ender will be nine to ten in the movie, the older children will be twelve-thirteen

The events of the book are compressed to a one year timespan

Two major characters are combined into one (to spoil yourself check here at Screenplay )

The character of Stilson is not in the screenplay

Neither Jake Lloyd or Haley Joel Osment are attached to the project, both are too old to play the lead. ---- fyi, Jake Lloyd had a private interview with OSC in March of 1999 (note before the phantom menace). Jake had read Ender's Game on the set of Star Wars and really wanted to play Ender (he was nine at the time). Scott was so impressed with Jake's acting chops that he became convinced that a child could carry the film and wrote a second draft of the script with the focus on Ender, as in the books. When the Phantom Menace came out, everyone discovered that Lucas's non-direction of actors is horribly magnified in children's preformances, and Jake Lloyd's carreer was completely shot for life, before it ever got started and Jake got a chance to demostrate is ability.

Bernard is now Sebastian in the screenplay, there were too many S names

The Locke/Demosthenese subplot is of course gone, it is the most obvious thing to cut to keep runtime down.

The character of Major Anderson is now a woman (there will be no romance)

Certain characters and events from the parallell novel Ender's Shadow are being included in the screenplay

The mental bombardment by the 'buggers' Ender experiences in the book will be made very evident to the viewers early on in the film, and the adults will know it is happening, and discuss how it has caused others to fail.

The scientific/politically correct term for 'buggers' is formics, that will be the name professionals refer to them as, the name bugger may still remain as a derogatory adjective as used by the children, and teh low class.

That about wraps up most of the info available on the movie, anything else can be found here at PhiloticWeb

Personnally I think that Miramax is a great choice and the movie has the potential to succeed at about Gladiator's level if marketed and produced exactly right. The only major weakness I could see hindering the film version would be the inclusion of the Ender's Shadow elements. Personnally I think Scott should be working on distilling the Ender's Game story down to it's visceral narrative drive, that would really let the storytelling shine ala David Lean's "Great Expectations." Adding those extreneous elements could be as self serving as Bill Goldman's baseball hero story to "Hearts in Atlantis," an adaptation that failed because every element that made it a Stephen King story was ruthlessly excised from the film version, and the result was a dark, disturbing, and mature coming-of-age story was transformed into a maudlin, nostalgic, and sentimental coming-of-age story. Imagine "Stand By Me" without any swearing, fireside chat, any of the characters having any worrys or problems, and no final send off, and you have a good approximation of what a disapointment "Hearts in Atlantis" was to those of us that had read the King story.

But Card is a fantastic writer and he's ruthlessly held on to the rights to get "Ender's Game" done right for fifteen years now, so the adaptation should be good, as long a solid director with a decent visual sense is holding the reigns we have the potential for a great film.

As Card said, everything is indefinite right now, they've only expressed interest (could this be the beginning of a series of speculative fiction films sparked by "Harry Potter" and (hopefully) "Lord of the Rings" success?) Only time will tell, but so far Card's avoided Brad Pitt as a fifteen year old Ender in '85 and Culkin in the nineties, so time has been on the good side so far.

call me locke