ENDER’S GAME (2013): Gavin Hood casts Asa Butterfield as Ender Wiggin

Asa Butterfield cast as Ender Wiggin in Ender’s Game. Asa Butterfield’s casting in Ender’s Game (2013) answers the question of who will pay the lead role in the Gavin Hood directed film. Ender’s Game, a book by Orson Scott Card, “is a seminal futuristic novel that Card originated as a short story in 1977 and then turned into a 1985 book that won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and spawned a series…The series is set in a future where mankind is facing annihilation by an aggressive alien society, an insect-like race known colloquially as “Buggers” but more formally as “Formics.” The central character, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, is one of the child soldiers trained at Battle School (and eventually Command School) to be the future leaders of the protection of Earth.” The film is being produced by “Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman…through their K/O Paper Products banner, along with Odd Lot’s Gigi Pritzker and Linda McDonough, the author and Lynn Hendee. Digital Domain is also an equity partner.”

We previously wrote about Ender Wiggin and the other characters in Ender’s Game here: Ender’s Game Movie is Casting Characters / Casting Call.

More on the film adaptation of Ender’s Game from author/screenwriter Orson Scott Card:

The problem with the book, as a movie, is that all the important information about ender’s motives comes from internal monologue – his thoughts.  Since voiceovers are loathsome, Ender’s actions would remain unexplained, and he would appear to be little more than a violent kid.

Also, the book would make a movie that was at least four hours long.  Much has to be cut – including all of Peter’s and Valentine’s online exploits, the mind game, and much of the incidental material before Ender gets into Bonzo’s army.

In short, much will be omitted.  But I remain confident that as long as the character of Ender himself, with his relationships with other kids, is in the movie, it will still be Ender’s Game to my own satisfaction and the satisfaction of the fans.

…Whoever plays Ender will almost certainly be an actor you haven’t seen before, and with any luck, a child who has not gone through the soul-numbing process of being cute on camera.  In other words, I hope it is a child who never had an agent, but who is very, very intelligent and therefore can take direction.

Here is my own source of greatest confidence:  The movie will not erase a single word of the book!  That’s how I endure knowing that Peter Jackson committed the repulsive crime of removing the Scouring of the Shire from the Lord of the Rings movie, which is akin to removing the last chapter from EG.  THAT, at least, I know will not happen in the EG movie – all the producers understand that the point of the story is finding out that the very thing that allowed Ender to defeat the formics (loving his enemy in order to defeat them) makes his discovery all the more galling to him.

Ender’s Game is being released on March 15, 2013. What do you think of the casting of Asa Butterfield in Ender’s Game?

Source: Deadline, Geektyrant, Slashfilm