Wolfgang Peterson Off "Ender's Game" Adaptation

Anyone who’s delved much at all into science fiction books will have already heard of Orson Scott Card and his magnificent book, Ender’s Game. It was one of my early favorites. I think my sister used to read it like once a year. I never got really caught up in the sequels but that first book was everything that’s good about science fiction writing.

Anyone who’s delved much into the world of film production probably also knows that Ender’s Game has been in the process of being adapted into a movie for years and years now. Most recently I really thought it was going to happen because acclaimed director Wolfgang Peterson (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm, Air Force One) had been attached to the project for a while. I really thought he might do a decent job with a screenplay that’s (still) being written by Orson Scott Card himself.

Well, it’s now being reported that Peterson is no longer attached to Ender’s Game and the film is, once again, without a director. The film was originally slated to be released this year, if you can believe it. The producers are now in the hunt for a new director and are hoping to begin shooting by early 2009. The film, however, will require an extended pre-production due to the many visual effects expected (if you’ve read the book, you’ll know why) so that date isn’t even certain.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, this is the description from the jacket:

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender� Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut�young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

Sadly, all we can do now is continue to wait and hope that they don’t screw this one up like so many other movies and book adaptations in the past. Since they don’t have a director at the moment and the film has already been in production so long, might I suggest a couple of names?

• Alfonso Cuarón – He’s pretty busy, but worth waiting for. He proved he can take on sci-fi with Children of Men while Harry Potter showed that he can definitely handle children. Would give the production some serious legitimacy.
• Guillermo del Toro – I know he’s going to be pretty busy with the Hobbit films, but his track record in the sci-fi/fantasy world speaks for itself (Blade II, Hellboy I and II) and I hear he got a great performance out of his child actor in Pan’s Labyrinth.
• Steven Spielberg – Hey, as long as we’re making a wish list. No one right now does sci-fi better than Spielberg and his track record with children speaks for itself. The only downside is you don’t know if the movie will be a popcorn flick or a serious sci-fi piece.

How many of you have read this book? Who would you like to see direct this movie if you had your dream director on it?