OrsonScottCard Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I talked a little while ago about Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged being essentially unfilmable (but about to start filming anyway). I could kvetch for hours about how unfilmable Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is, and how ill-fated any potential adaptation would be. Apparently Wolfgang Petersen, long attached to direct the project, has decided that he agrees -- or, more likely, he's just tired of waiting for the thing to get off the ground. According to sci-fi blog io9, Petersen is officially off the long-in-the-works Ender's Game movie, but the producers are busy looking for a new director and mulling casting possibilities.

The guy who wrote Jesus' Son and Face, Oren Moverman, has fallen off the radar over the last 5 years, only to explode with a slew of new writing projects, including two biopics -- Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There and Interrupted, about Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray. He's just added one more to the pile to change things up, an adaptation of Orson Scott Card's recent novel -- Empire. The film will be a Joel Silver production under Warner Bros., the second Card adaptation for the company in recent months, as they're also bringing Ender's Game to the big screen.

The story is set in the near future, when the United States has gone into chaos after the assassination of the president and vice president. The former is killed by a rocket launcher that fires into the south wall of the West Wing, and more creatively, the VP dies when a dump truck, of all things, backs up into his limo. The country is flung "into civil war and a team of special forces operatives try to unravel the conspiracy and save the country." Moverman says: "The premise is balanced by an entertaining storyline that is not some dark and foreboding polemic." Considering the death-by-garbage thing, I can only imagine what the rest of the book reads. But truthfully, I'd rather have a flick on Card's family. According to Wikipedia, it's pretty interesting. His ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and his family later became big LDS'ers (Mormons), some of whom fled the U.S. for Canada years ago to keep up their polygamy practices.

I'm sure I'm in the minority in thinking that Ender's Game would make a horrible film. Maybe I don't remember the book well enough, but I see it being awfully repetitive. Many devoted readers, though, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of little Bean to the big screen, so I hope for them that it isn't another disappointing adaptation. On the plus side, the book's author, Orson Scott Card, has written the script. On the minus side, Card thinks Serenity is the "best science fiction movie, ever" and in the past wrote that he wants Ender's Game to be the kind of movie that Serenity is or else never be made.

The author talked with IGN this week and had some more good and bad news for the fans. First the bad: the movie has stalled again, as Warner Bros. has put the project in turnaround. It isn't known why the studio changed its mind -- it seemed all set to go at the end of last year with Wolfgang Petersen directing -- but Card actually is happy they did. That is apparently the good news: the producers are now looking to bring the project to another studio or even finance it independently. I guess the benefit seems to be that the filmmakers will not begin the thing until they know they can make it right.

Card also dished out some other bits about the film, which are neither good nor bad. He says his script, which includes nothing of the past draft written by David Benioff and Dan Weiss, is an adaptation of both Ender's Game and its follow-up, Ender's Shadow -- though seemingly only includes parts of each. He also said that the film's producers aren't intending on making this into a franchise (I bet that is what turned off WB) and squashed rumors that Ridley Scott would be taking over from Petersen. Maybe Joss Whedon is a fan and could make Card's dreams come true.