In the works for seven years, the film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game could finally be about to take off, with Wolverine’s Gavin Hood at the helm…
Celebrating its quarter century this year, Orson Scott Card's novel Ender's Game is widely regarded as a high point in 80s science fiction, garnering a Nebula Award in 1985 and a Hugo Award the following year.
Optioned by Warner Bros. in 2003, a movie adaptation has long been in the works, initially with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss rewriting a screenplay originally penned by Card himself, and Wolfgang Peterson set to direct.
After Peterson parted company from the project last year, Card announced that he was planning to write an entirely new script, abandoning completely the earlier work carried out by himself, Benioff and Weiss.
Now, the LA Times reports that X-Men Origins: Wolverine director Gavin Hood could be set to direct, and has re-written Card's new screenplay. The article is quick to point out that Hood's involvement as director isn't a foregone conclusion, however, but it's nevertheless good news for a project that Card himself had written off as dead in the water last year.
The original novel was an uncompromisingly violent depiction of a future war, and if Hood can bring together the emotional gravity of his work in the Oscar-winning Tsotsi with the better moments of the effects-laden Wolverine, Ender's Game could receive the intelligent adaptation it richly deserves.