Possible New Edition of ‘Ender’s Game’ … Someday

The BYU student newspaper, The Universe, has a brand new interview from ‘Ender’s Game’ author and BYU alumnus, Orson Scott Card. Card talks about his involvement in the ‘Ender’s Game’ film, his recent work on the ‘Ender’s Game Alive’ audio drama, and more. Read below!

Q: Have you, or have film studios, wanted to make “Ender’s Game” a film before now? Why did you choose now to make the film?

A: We’ve been working on this movie for many years. Chartoff Productions, with Lynn Hendee as the producer who worked most constantly with me, optioned “Ender’s Game” more than 15 years ago. I wrote many scripts, with their counsel, and we took it to studios and possible producing partners many times.

The problem was that despite the visual strength of some of the scenes, the book is very hard to film. It takes place through Ender’s point of view — in the book, you always know what Ender is thinking. But a film can’t get inside a character’s head. So even if you show the scenes, it doesn’t mean the audience will like or care about the character.

We found that people who knew the book already would read my scripts and say, “Wow, you nailed it.” But someone who had never read the book would read the same script and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t until my final attempt that I finally understood how to make it work.

Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield star in “Ender’s Game,” set to be released on Nov. 1, 2013. (Photo courtesy Summit Entertainment)

The story wasn’t about Ender vs. the aliens, or even about Ender vs. the adults. It was about Ender with the other kids — helping them, caring about them, showing an example of strength and courage, and never acting for his own benefit at their expense. I realized that to work, the script had to make the audience want to have Ender as their leader — not because he was so smart, but because they could trust him completely.

The script that had that idea at its heart worked. But that is not the script that was filmed. The director, Gavin Hood, shot the script he wrote himself, without reference to mine. That is not a surprise — executives can lose their jobs for filming an author-written screenplay.

I had my personal education in screenwriting, though, and more to the point, my personal exploration of my own book and what worked in it. So this spring, as I wrote the audioplay version of it — a six-hour miniseries for voice actors called “Ender’s Game Alive” — I didn’t have to go through the long learning curve. I knew how to adapt it. Of course, it’s a completely new script because the needs of audio drama are absolutely different from film scripting.

But I think when Audible.com releases the Skyboat Road production this fall, audiences that give it a try will find that yes, you can have a complete dramatic adaptation of “Ender’s Game” despite the inability to get inside Ender’s head. Of course, I had six hours to work with; the movie has less than two.

As for the movie: It got made when it did because there were finally studios willing to bet some serious money on making it work. First Odd Lot Productions came in, partnering with Digital Domain; then Summit brought in the rest of the budget. In midstream, Summit was bought by LionsGate.

I have to say that the LionsGate executives have been absolutely brilliant in their support of a production that they didn’t actually choose to do. I’ve seen a rough cut, and while there are changes that will annoy some fans, it’s a sharp, tight, emotional movie that contains much of what works in “Ender’s Game.”

Best of all, the movie doesn’t erase a single word of the book. So people who first encounter the story in the movie can always turn to the book to get the whole thing. And those who see only the movie will still have had a good time in the theater. Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, and all the other kids and adults do a fine job in their roles, and the designs look great.

I think the special effects and acrobatic teams did the Battle Room as well as it can possibly be done. Good thing, too, because the kids about killed themselves learning how to make the moves on wires that the Cirque de Soleil professionals taught them to do. I bet they wished more than once that there had been a way to really film it in freefall.

Q: Will this affect the future of your writing career? Will you spend more time on screenplays or continue mainly with novels?

A: I make my living from fiction. To me, that is the finest storytelling medium ever designed. Even when a person aspires to screenwriting, television is the place where writers have the most freedom and the most influence over the final product. Most screenwriters labor on many scripts and see few, if any, make it to the screen — and even then, their work is usually at least partly undone by others. So in writing fiction, I have an unlimited effects budget, I can use all the locations I want, the cast is always superb, and nobody can come in after me and cut or reshoot scenes they don’t like.

Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield star in “Ender’s Game,” set to be released on Nov. 1, 2013. (Photo courtesy Summit Entertainment)
Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield star in “Ender’s Game,” set to be released on Nov. 1, 2013. (Photo courtesy Summit Entertainment)
For good or ill, when I write a novel, it’s written — unless I come back myself to fix it. I made a stupid mistake near the end of one of my novels. Fixed it in the paperback; we’re fixing the audiobook right now. Just a small revision in the last half of the last chapter. But such a howlingly dumb error. I was tired. And in my defense, nobody else caught it, either. Ever. But I did, and I couldn’t write the next book in the series till I fixed it. So yeah, even my fiction isn’t the final version.

I’ve written Valentine’s and Ender’s meeting after the war three different ways, in “Ender’s Game,” “Ender in Exile,” and most recently in “Ender’s Game Alive.” Which is the real one? Maybe someday I’ll do a new edition of “Ender’s Game” that reconciles them all. What matters is that in each case the scene does the job it needed to do. The characters are true to themselves, and each scene works within its context. That’s all I can ask a scene to do. After all, you do know that I just make this stuff up, don’t you?

Read the interview in it’s entirety here.

The ‘Ender’s Game’ film will be released in U.S. theaters on November 1, 2013.