Benioff and Weiss To Write Ender's Game Script

nighthawk127127 writes "According to the Fresco Pictures website, David Benioff (writer of the screenplay for Troy) has been signed on by Warner Brothers to write the script for the movie adaptation of Ender's Game. Rumors of the Ender's Game movie have been circulating for a long time now, but this is the first time in a while we've gotten some definite information. The movie will be a combination of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card." Well, gosh, with Troy under his belt, all my concerns about the movie sucking are straight out! *cough*

Comments

Fears I have about the film

[Chairboy]

I have the following concerns/predictions:

1. The ages of the characters will be upped by 5 or so years because the film execs won't think that people would find 5 year olds killing each other kosher. Ender will be 10+ years old in the beginning, almost guaranteed.

2. The actor. There are few actors that could pull off the role of Ender. Haley Joel Osmont is the closest I can think of, but he's been getting older ("I see dead kittens") and would probably have a beard by the time this films.

3. Peter.

4. Conglomeration of enemies. Will Achille be combined with other baddies? This might not be bad, but if Bean and Ender both come from the same elementary school, that might be a little too pat. I understand that the story must be pruned to fit in 16:9, but I worry...

The final worry: The ending. So many people have read the book, will they use the same ending? I've seen other movies from books where, to get a new emotional response or 'gotcha', the ending was changed from what you expect. The original ending is powerful and chilling (namely, the disposition of the final simulations), who knows what screenwriters the caliber of those who wrote Troy will produce?

Here's my nightmare:

MAZER: Ender, the bugger fighters are almost on me!
ENDER: No! They've taken away the woman I love, they won't take away my teacher too!
MAZER: Ender, (blasting noises in the background, static) there's something I haven't told you. I am.... your father.
ENDER: Noooooooooooo!
MAZER: Tell Valentine and Peter I loved them!
(scene of Mazer's snub fighter being destroyed while doing the trench run on the Formic mothership that is approaching Earth)
ENDER: NOOOOOOOOOO!
(A Formic fighter pulls up behind Ender, whos ship has been damaged. Just as he is about to die, the fighter explodes and the shuttle that brought him to the Battle school descends into the picture)
(radio): Hey Ender, thought you could use some help.
ENDER: Valentine? Is that you?
VALENTINE: It's me, and I brought some help.
PETER: Hey Andrew, you were right. Let's blow this thing and go home.
ENDER: Ayeeeeee! (fires D.R. Device)

Re:Hemos:

[WIAKywbfatw]

on an unrelated note: kudo points for a creative spelling of favorite.

Uh, that's how most of the English-speaking worlds spells the word. Unless I am very much mistaken, it's only the US (and US dependencies) where the spelling "favorite" is used instead of "favourite".

Re:Disappointed by Ender's Shadow?

[JayBlalock]

Since the Shadow books are told from Bean's point of view, of course he'll be critical of Ender's actions. I thought the entire point of Shadow was that, while Bean was technically smarter and more competent, he utterly lacked the people skills necessary to get the job done. Ender succeeded for the reason he was selected in the first place - his combination of Peter's ruthlessness AND Val's empathy. He had to be *balanced* in these things to win, and Bean would have failed in the end just as Val or Peter would have. What I took away from the book was that it emphasized even more Ender's flawed humanity and how, ultimately, those flaws were needed instead of simple machine-like perfection.

Don't forget, BTW, that while Bean had awesome deductive powers, he could also get off on wildly incorrect tangents precisely because he was too self-reliant. Unwilling to really trust any source outside of his own head, he lacked any real "reality check," and that too would have likely proven fatal had he been the child chosen.

(don't take this as uncritical praise of Card, BTW. He seems to have a long history of taking a good idea and then running it deep into the ground. I was disappointed in Shadow Puppets and, while I haven't read Shadow of the Giant yet, I have a sinking feeling that he'll end up torpedoing the series by the end, just as he did the "Ender Saga")

Expand your awareness ...

[Chromodromic]

Well, gosh, with Troy under his belt, all my concerns about the movie sucking are straight out! *cough*

Many times I've been shocked about how little some people know or understand about the Internet, especially considering that it surrounds so many aspects of their everyday lives. And yet, since this is the same with film, a much older medium, I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise at all.

I'll constantly read commentaries blaming the suck-factor (in their opinion) of a film on this particular actor or that particular director, or on the quality of the writing. Let me offer only that it isn't that simple.

Many, many, many people touch a film and can have the power to change it significantly before any public audience views it. By the time a studio movie is publicly released, the script has gone through, oh, ten, twelve, twenty major revisions, producers have had their say, the director his, and the editor his (all masculine pronouns used for the sake of convenience, now lost completely due to this note). During that time each major player in the production of the film has been presented with choices -- choices, mind you, not creations from their own brains, but choices based on the quality of the people who've been hired, and who may have been hired for any number of experience, quality, or political reasons -- about costuming, production design, sound design and mixing, and even photography which, although affected by directorial input is almost always actually executed by a director of photography who, like the others, makes *strong* suggestions and provides choices.

Given how collaborative and varied film is, it's almost a miracle that any good movies get made at all. And yet, there are still many times I'll hear comments like the one above, as if the writer had any real input at all on the quality, good or bad, of Troy. Believe me, they were fucking given 10,000 notes, and expected to make changes quickly. And they did so, with a smile, even when they were faced with the problem of taking a fucking stupid note and trying to figure out how to incorporate it into the script without having to rewrite the entire story to justify it. And it was a *they*. I don't care if only one (living) writer is listed, there were more who didn't get credited. That is the way it works.

Keep in mind that this is the industry that employs Harvey Weinstein, the man who, when he owned the Lord of the Rings rights, wrote to Peter Jackson asking, "Why does there have to be so many hobbits?"

I realize that the above quote doesn't exclude the possibility that the film sucked, in that opinion, due to the efforts of others. But it would be nice if, sometimes, people could keep an open mind and realize that when a film sucks, there may be no direct reason. Sometimes they just suck. Same for the reverse, sometimes they're just great and all of the elements came together. But it's not useful to assign blanket blame or congratulations to anyone in film, unless they've got an established track record and what you're doing is evaluating a body of work.

I rescind my comments in the case of Joel Schumacher, whom I still blame for Batman's nipples. I hate you with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, you bastard.

Re:Basic Plot Inaccuracies?

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point, when you are going to differentiate SO MUCH from the original story - that's when you should just create your own f'ing story with a new title.

Umm, you mean like calling it "Troy," instead of calling it "The Illiad?"

OSC recently commented on this movie

[DoctoRoR]

Uncle Orson talked about this movie at a signing a week ago. Here is the gist of his comments:

• He's rejected quite a few contracts that try to use older characters. He would catch little clauses like the producers reserve the right to make modifications of age.
• While this movie sits in purgatory, possible lead actors age themselves out of the picture. OSC, though, is confident the actor who will play Ender has indeed been born :)
• They had to combine Ender's Game with Ender's Shadow in order to get at Ender's inner thoughts. If you look at Ender from the outside, OSC said, he just looks like an angry, dangerous boy.
• He trashed Lucas and the new Star Wars films and thought Ender's Game, when it's finally made, will have a substantially better storyline.

From a recent OSC talk

[banesong]

I saw OSC at a book signing last Tuesday (Mar 15, 2005), and he had a few things to say in regards to the movie:

1. He was pleased with the selection of Benioff and Weiss due to their past performance on pictures such as Troy and 25th Hour.

2. The actors to play both Ender and Bean have, in his words "probably been born", but as of this moment are not old enough to really be on the radar.

3. Currently Wolfgang Peterson is slated to direct, and is happy and supportive of the project.

4. There is a specific clause in the contract to not change the ages of the characters, as this would shift the dynamic of the story in a direction that it should not go.

5. The main reason for combining Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow is so that a good deal of Ender's emotions (which, for those who have read Ender's Game, is a good deal of the book) will be able to be externalized, or become available to the the viewer.

Re:Basic Plot Inaccuracies?

[2nd Post!]

Where do you get that Shakespeare is the cream?

He was popular and funny and accessible. If I were to compare his works to anyone today, it would be Andrew Lloyd Weber.

Re:Wouldn't go, anyhow.

[Jim_Callahan]

Dude, speaking against gay marriage is not the same thing as funding persecution of gays. If speech was the same as action, slashdot would have been shut down a long time ago when 90% of its members were jailed for treason in various countries.

All you're funding by buying Cards works is free speech (oh, and his food and stuff, but i won't begrudge him that). If nothing else, every movement needs opposing voices to find any holes in a system before it's passed into law.

I probably won't see the movie, but that's because i share your premonition that it's going to suck, not because of any politics.