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The Latest on Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME
Hey folks, Harry here... we haven't had much on ENDER'S GAME since Thanksgiving of last year when I ran into Orson at the Los Angeles Science Fiction Convention aka LOSCON, where I got to speak with him at length about the frustrating process known as... (heavy drums and low brass inserted here) DEVELOPMENT. This is a process that noone every really loves, as you must take what is a wonderful idea for a film and then boil it down to the essentials and make it sound appealing to skateboard culture. Though it seems that he is pursuing some interesting channels, specifically the filmmaker listed below.... here ya go...
I attended Orson Scott Card's Maryland signing of the new Ender-universe
book "Shadow of the Hedgemon" this weekend, and he talked quite a bit about
the upcoming(as in "coming when it'll be done right") Ender's Game movie. A
short list:
Jake Lloyd is now too old to play Ender, and he is now looking for a pair of
9 year olds to play Ender and Bean. Why 9? Because their voices won't change
during the production, and they will appear much smaller in stature(just
like in the book) to their classmates. However, do not rule out Jake
appearing in the movie, I would place him as Dink.
He also said, that whomever he gets to direct the movie will not be known
for sci-fi, but for good drama(and "absolutely not James Cameron"). Penny
Marshall's name was dropped, but I personally pray she doesn't do it. Other
than that, the movie is in a holding pattern until he has a team he can
trust, and a good deal with a studio(Universal was mentioned)
Just call me:
The Earth Pig Born
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Nothing in this bit of news is new at all. He has been saying that for the past year which seems to indicate that there is no progress. /// I feel for Card. He really thinks that he can keep control of his intellectual product. Well, unless your work is so literary that only a select few directors will take it on *because* they love it, I severely doubt "Enders Game" will be treated well by Hollywood. Unfortunately, "Enders Game" is science fiction and Hollywood will take all that possibility and overemphasize the battles. They'll scratch their heads over Enders internal conflict, will wonder why the enemy (Buggers) never make an appearance except in the 'sims', and will probably make everything hinge on the twist. Card will be a really old dude before he sees "Enders Game" done the way he wants it.
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but wouldn't it be neat? :) If they (whoever "they" turns out to be) do it right, I'd LOVE to see Ender's Game as a movie. I just re-read it after a few years (along with Ender's Shadow, which I didn't even know existed 'til last month)... what a great book. Since I read it the first time, I graduated from high school and college, and joined the military. With the change in my perspective, the book affected me on different levels on my second go-round. Ender's Shadow was also very good... I didn't expect Bean to be how Card portrayed him, but that doesn't mean I didn't love it. I can't wait to read "Shadow of the Hegemon"... well, maybe I can wait 'til the price goes down a bit. :)
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it was good but a lot is going to be changed, i think. the novel is made up of lots and lots of little scenes that build on character and stuff which they would never have time to put on screen. it is a very rare thing for me to have read a book BEFORE it comes on screen so maybe im gonna get my first taste at being a purist!hehehe. lookin forward to annoying the people i go see it with with my ranting on what the film missed and what they got wrong.baff
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call me a hopeless Otaku, but I see the Enderverse working better as an animated miniseries. you wouldnt have to worry about actor's growing on you, you'd be able to pull off the more outragous special effects, you'd be able to patch in the subplots. also, you could do the entire shadow storys at the same time as the main one with the extra time you'd have with a series. to make things even mor ein this idea's favor you have a built in market with the anime crowd who have been drooling for an american equivalent to Neon Genesis Evangelion. I think that Enders Game could have that potential if put in the hands of someone like Paul Dini (probably a misspelling, I mean the guy responsable for the breathtakingly accurate portrayal of batman in the animated series)
then again, I could be totally wrong-- it's been known to happen ^_^ -
Dini and Timm helming Ender's game gets me all tingly.
Hell, i am just glad Scott isn't still attached.
Speaker for the Dead changed my life. -
The book was a real page turner. It just purely rocked, I want to see the Battle Room!!! BATTLE ROOM!!!!! I wanna see that shit...Oh ..How fuckin cool would that BE??? Come On Studo!! Anny Studio....USA made Pich Black and that was good.....Man can you see this movie....SUMMER 2002 ENDER GAME "The Game Is On"..."The Game To Save Earth Is On"......-jd
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I think it could work well as a live action mini series, ala Dune on Sci-Fi (but better, and I hope there's no battle school orgy scene.)
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This really should be done as a mini series....in order to make it work in the two hour format, it's been said that they have cut tall the peter and valentine scenes...which i thought were integral to the story....as for the rest...i honestly don't think you can show enders start as a launchie, his time with Bonso, and Rose de nose...and his own final command, dragon army in a 2 hr fllick....3 maybe, or a mini-series on tv or cable...I mean look at the recent "dune"...i wasn't that impressed with alot of it, but i admired that it was made...surely this could be done with enders game...(anybody here remember the wonder years... i always pictured the older brother on that show as peter...he had that streak of malice in him crucial to the part....)
As for the perfect director...there are a few posibilities....(this is a pipe dream list, mind you) Phil Robinson of Sneakers fame....think ab out it...a great ensemble cast, excellent character dev. and a sense of urgency and suspense....perfect for this movie....
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Who gives a slimy fuck if this movie ever gets made? Card is a horrible writer! I am a voracious reader and his "The Lost Boys" is the ONLY book I have ever started and thrown away before I finished it. 200 pages in and not a goddamn thing happened!
His phrasing is tripe, his storylines, if you can find them, are abortions.
I bet Jennifer Tilly could write a more intelligent book- with a first draft!
Orson sucks! -
You don't see those in the wild too often these days, Billy. Yawn.
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That would be a great idea, but I can't see it happening. I have a feeling that Orson wants Ender to be taken 'seriously' by Hollywood, and ghettoizing it with the animated treatment is not what he has in mind for his baby.
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...until animating something isn't considered "ghettoizing" it.
*sigh*
Oh well...back to Cowboy Bebop... -
Glad you mentioned it, Sirius, because that could be a ray of hope for Mr. Card. However, it would take someone like Dreamworks, Don Bluth or a Japanese studio to do it and frankly there are better stories out there that these people want to do themselves. There's no ghettoizing about it. When you have good genre films like "Princess Mononoke" and adaptations like "Ghost in the Shell", hell it could be done.
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I was really unimpressed with Jake Lloyd's performance in TPM. Haley Joel Osment, however, has demonstrated his great acting abilities in The Sixth Sense. I'm not sure how old he is now, but I think he would be an excellent Ender, able to express the wide range of emotion that Ender goes through in the book -- insecurity, fear, wanting to be accepted, determination, and even shame (at the end).
And, since he has a proven track record, studio execs might be more willing to go with him than to cast someone new...
Just my 2c.
--Scott
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I guess it was the decade or so of mental inbreeding. Most of the good ones died off, and their offspring are like grotesque parodies. This one's so feeble, I don't even feel like bashing him. --- The problem with an animated Ender's Game would be the reluctance of a studio to produce a genuinely vicious cartoon. It would have been extremely hard to run the scenes where Ender kills other children past censors without an R or higher rating. Put them to animation, and you've got a serious clash between the expected innocence of cartoons and the violence of the image. The same thing happened with Batman Beyond (apparently - I've never seen the movie or the show), and I can't blame the studios.
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I'm crushed... Seriously, I think that this may be one of those books (Like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,) that won't ever be translated to film. This story is so full of subtle emotions and tricky characters. (I mean, where are you gonna find a kid to play Bean? He's supposed to have the intellect of a 35-year-old in the body of a 3 year old... and if you read Ender's Shadow, you'd know he's supposed to be dangeroulsy malnourished...) Those things just don't translate well to film, especially when kids are involved.
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Enders Game is one of my favorite stories. This would've been a great movie 15 years ago.
Unfortunately, most of his once-groundbreaking visions are now Hollywood cliches. Card should be getting royalty checks from a lot of mofos! I mean do we really want to see another boy trained by a battle-experienced mentor save the universe [from alien bugs]?! -
I think a good way to do the Simulation sequences would be to make ti more like virtual reality. In the future, 3-D virtual reality would be perfect-- like you can't tell it from the real thing. So Ender steps into this pod resembling a cockpit, the simulation begins and there are stars and ships all around him, and he appears to be flying in his own small, fast command ship, from which he can lead the fleet. This way the battles can be portrayed in a traditional way-- we can see what it would actually look like (although in reality his ship wouldn't be there). It would also be a cool blurring of the lines between reality and simulation, which would really work for people who havn't read the book and don't know the twist ending (which by the way totally took me by surprise-- I had an inkling a few pages in advance, just a suspicion, but I was only 12 when I read it, a perfect age for reading the book)
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Ender's Game is such a fantastic, intelligent book. It could be a great movie, albeit a long one. A talented child actor would be essential, of course (imho, Jake Lloyd couldn't have cut it even with a chainsaw). I sort of wish they'd shoot Ender's Shadow at the same time, with overlapping scenes shot from different camera angles. That would be way cool. I heard the battle room scenes would be done entirely CGI, with the actor's faces superimposed on the figures. Using CGI, they could also make Bean look like he was starving, since that is how his story begins. I hope they don't do what OSC says they're thinking about and rename the Buggers, just to avoid confusion with the aliens in Starship Troopers, or whatever-the-hell-that-lame-movie's-name was.
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WHO:
M Night Shymalan
WHY:
He has demonstrated a unique approach to directing children in dramatic roles. Also he has handled material that has used a surprise ending to shift the film into a different context. Those of you who have read this will understand the need for this type of director. What do you think ? -
i hope to god joke loyd stays out of this project, i loved the book and this could be an awesome movie, but wasn't he the kid that played anakin? maybe im wrong, but i thought he was and that kid was aweful. I think Jar Jar's purpose was to be more annoying that anakin, and he was just barely so. although a good script and director would help him I'm sure.
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Jan 15, 2001 8:40:41 PM CST
of course if they pull off the "Hitchhikers" movie that statemen
by kojiro
yah that's all for me
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... that would mean it would be a top quality movie. What the hell is Card thinking?? Jeez, as soon as he started rumbling about how he wanted Jake Lloyd as Ender (thank god this can no longer happen)I figured this movie was in danger. Didn't he watch Phantom Menace? Jake Lloyd CAN'T ACT. And why not Cameron for Ender's Game? Let's look at his track record: Aliens, Abyss, T1, T2, Titanic, True Lies. Oh, and he wrote one of my favourite films: Stange Days. Ya, Cameron would destroy Ender's Game.
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The battle room sequences and simulators seem tailor-made for computer animation- and it would give Pixar the opportunity to do some full-on human character animation (I think they're probably ready, after characters like Al in Toy Story 2).
Unfortunately, it is probably true that this is an R-rated story, and animation can't get green-lighted with that kind of audience restriction ALTHOUGH if there were ever a project for Lassiter and his crew to spend some of their three-mega-hits-in-a-row capital on, it would be Ender's Game.
And if they could finagle a PG-13 rating (it's only violence, after all, not sex and profanity, and nothing quite so brutal as being sliced in half by a lightsaber) it would still have a huge market with young boys- just not the little kids Disney covets.
I do believe that trying to get real kid actors to play characters with the depth and intelligence of an Ender or Bean would be a fool's errand. Especially because there are long stretches of the story with no grown-ups around at all. For my money, the kids of Springfield are the model for casting. You'd need grown-ups performing the voices for the characters to be believable.
Or think of the difference between David Lynch's Alia and John Harrison's. For a child character to be both preternaturally precocious and believable- use an adult's voice. -
i personally think that jake lloyd's an underestimated actor. everyone judges him by phantom menace. how easy can it be to say "wizard!" like you mean it? besides, Orson Scott Card thought he had enough talent to be ender, he's just too old now.
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