Card talks about the Ender’s Game movie
I just read this article that puts forth Orson Scott Card’s thoughts on the status of the Ender’s Game movie (as always via sfsignal). This is definitely in my top 3 sci-fi novels and I would love to see this turned into a great movie. Nevertheless I have extremely strong doubts that anyone would take the book at face value and make that movie. The horrific conditions and terrible actions that these children take just would not play to an American audience. To Harry Potterify it would be the most likely way it would proceed and that would be awful.
I have some problems already (are you surprised?) - for example he says this:
Card “owes a lot” to the wife of Fisher King screenwriter Richard LaGravenese because it was she who suggested the screenplay incorporate elements from both Ender’s Game and Card’s subsequent book, Ender’s Shadow.
That doesn’t seem like a good idea, take screen time away from story derived from the genuinely great book and add in elements from the mediocre, need more cash 15 years later book? Ender’s Shadow (focusing on Bean) is a fun read and an interesting exercise in writing the same story from a different perspective, but it is in no way a great book. I think I read Shadow of the Hegemon too, but can’t remember.
Then the article continues:
Card said the filmmakers are not necessarily thinking of Ender’s as a franchise “in the sense of it being like Star Wars, of movie after movie” since the film’s story, like the book’s, is a standalone tale. However, he said there’s franchise potential for Ender’s in TV and videogames.
Right, unless of course it does well. Then fortunately, Card has graced us all with book after book after that standalone story. He just went for it and franchised Ender’s Game into Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets and Shadow of the Giant. I love it and I hate it when author’s go back for a second try a decade later.
