ENDER'S GAME Casting News Galore!

The adaptation of Orson Scott Card's sci-fy classic ENDER'S GAME has been a tumolutous one. The book is about a futuristic Earth that has been attacked by aliens, The Buggers, and the military recruits young kids to be groomed into leaders to fight The Buggers.  Card had developed a script as far back as 2003 working with Warner Bros. and Wolfgang Peterson. The project fell through for many years, but now Summit Entertainment has picked up distribution rights. With the almost perfect timing with the new craze of young adult book-to-movie adaptations nowadays, production is finally starting to kick into gear with a finished script by director Gavin Hood with the producing duo of Kurtzman and Orci.

Now many casting bits are starting to fall into place. The biggest task is casting the title character of Ender Wiggins, a young boy who is selected to attend a battle school to train to fight an alien race who is at war with Earth. The young actor, Asa Butterfield, who recently starred in the critical darling and one of our favorite movies of the year, HUGO, has been cast as the title character of Ender.

The next bit of casting news is Hailee Steinfeld, another favorite young actor of ours, is in talks for the role of Petra Arkanian, one of Ender's closest friends at battle school. Now, even though we were pulling for Steinfeld to head up the HUNGER GAMES trilogy, she has the potential now to star in this series of movies. Petra is one of Ender's closest confidants, and even though she's more of a supporting character in the first book, she plays more of a substantial role in the rest of the series.

Harrison Ford is also rumored to be one of the few actors in consideration for Colonel Hyrum Graff. Graff sees the potential and intelligence in Ender at a young age and recruits him to battle school. He is the classic old colonel who is cruel and manipulative but sees the potential in his young protegee.

So lots to chew on and think about while the film is in production. I recently read this book for the first time, and overall enjoyed the sci-fy aspects. There are a few story issues that I have, but nothing that can't be fixed with a decent adaptation to screen.

There are a few other main characters that will be interesting to see where casting goes includes Ender's psychopathic brother, Peter, and his loving and loyal sister, Valentine. So what do you think of casting?

ENDER'S GAME will be released March 15, 2013.

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