The idea of making a movie of Orson Scott Card’s SF novel Ender’s Game have been around almost as long as the book itself, with Card himself working on multiple versions of a screenplay along with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (who’ve since moved on to adapt George RR Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire for HBO; apparently, vast genre novels are in their blood), and possible directors including Wolfgang Petersen. After the most recent attempt was assumed to have crashed and burned earlier this year, it seems as if hope is, once again, on the horizon. The LA Times’ 24 Frames blog is reporting that Gavin Hood, the man behind X-Men Origins: Wolverine, has taken up the cause, rewriting the script yet again and circling the project as director, as well.
In many respects, Hood may be a match for Game‘s mix of SF concepts and character-based drama – before the big-budget mess that was Wolverine, Hood had directed the more intimate, Oscar-winning Tsotsi – and a successful Ender’s Game could bring a vindication for the director, who delivered Wolverine amid rumors of producer Richard Donner having directed key scenes and “saving” the movie. Presuming, of course, that the movie ends up being made – which, given its history, seems to be harder to achieve than you’d think.
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