Trust me to post a blog the day before I listen to Orson Scott Cards post script on the audiobook. Orson speaks a lot on the various attempts Hollywood has made to film ender’s game. It seems that he has been under great pressure almost from the minute he wrote the novel to sell his story out, with most Hollywood industry execs going to some length to try to “improve” the story by making ender 16 so he can have a love interest. This kind of explains similar treatments of other works (I’m looking at you Percy Jackson,) and makes the fact we didn’t get a 16 year old Harry Potter a marvel. As Card says those that think the story can be changed and still work just proved to him to not understand the story. He includes some very interesting anecdotes about execs using questionable tactics, such as agreeing that ender will be played as 11 only to include in a sub paragraph in an unrelated clause of the contract that “casting will be at the studios discretion. This clause invalidates any other condition made in this contract.” And I have to wonder how many adaptations have been spoiled by these tricks being played.
It does seem to me that the film is in good hands having been in talks for a movie for damn near 25 years it seems that he isn’t going to let his story be ruined now. Some over interesting tit bits are that to make the screenplay work he effectively merged enders game and ender’s shadow. This way he could give the film the dynamic it needed. While it’s not necessarily his script that will be used it seemed that at the time of recording it was a good bet that the final screenplay would be his work with a better known screen writer’s name on it.
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