Ender's Ansible

Baseball in Battle School?

‘Entertainment Tonight’ showcased a preview of tomorrow’s ‘Ender’s Game’ trailer. Here’s a break down of the new footage:

There’s a Harrison Ford voice over saying, “They know our strategies” and we see an air fight with the buggers ships and the IF ships, weaving in and out of the clouds. Some ships are hit and burn to the ground. The ships seem to swarm like a hive. (Very awesome).

We see battle school students going up stairs, hands moving and touching a “desk” or tablet screen, and battle school students seemingly at a simulator with helmets on.

After rewatching the clip about 20 times, I’m sure we see a very quick clip of a few very important cast members playing baseball in a battle school corridor. Khylin Rhambo (Dink Meeker) is swinging a bat at a ball, Asa Butterfield (Ender Wiggin) is catcher, Brandon Soo Hoo (Fly Molo), Hailee Steinfeld (Petra Arkanian) and 2 others are visible waiting to catch the ball. I’m unsure if this is part of the movie or not, but they appear to be in costume.

Next we see battle school students in white wrestling in a weight room with Nonso Anozie (Sergeant Dap) pacing nearby. Then a series of quick shots featuring Ender’s face in various places, the battle room, marching, in some kind of a chair, etc.

Finally, there’s Ender standing at a simulator, which may or may not be the final battle. He’s moving his hands in the air as he operates a virtual simulator in front of him. He zooms in on a planet. There are blue-lighted ships at what is obviously a bugger planet. It cuts to a shot of a very large strange formic ship with small ships swarming around it. Ender shouts “NOW!” and two blue lights fly towards the middle of the screen and blow up the bugger home world.

Thanks all the extra footage, everything else were scenes we already was in the 10-second footage earlier this week.

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

Last Name “Wiggin”

In the last week, the ‘Ender’s Game’ publicity has released a slew of new images. You can check them all out in the Official Images Gallery.

We noticed in this image that there’s an outline of a ship.

Which appears to be the same as the toy ship we pointed out in Ender’s bedroom months ago. Check out the middle shelf on the left! This may be a ship from the IF’s first or second formic war since in the image is placed with Mazer Rackham, above. Or, it might be a formic ship. What do you think? (Check out the complete breakdown of Ender’s bedroom here.)

The overlay text on the image below suggests that Ender may have an army of 14, not including himself. Additional evidence for this theory includes the fact that there are 14 soldiers in the image of Ender’s army meeting Ender, their commander, for the first time (because they’re all still wearing different army patches, but standing in the Dragon Army barracks). This differs from the 40 soldiers + one commander army the novel describes.

Finally, many of you have asked if the film would keep Ender’s original last name, “Wiggins,” because that’s what it said on the first versions of the Facebook collages – the answer is no. This was a simple error on the part of the social media team and it has since been fixed. Ender’s last name will be “Wiggin” in the film.

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

Entertainment Weekly Magazine

Earlier this week EW.com released this first look of Sir Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham in the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie. Starting today, you can pick up a print version of this photo in ‘Entertainment Weekly Magazine’ at your local newsstand.

This issue, #1258 of ‘Entertainment Weekly Magazine,’ is for the week of May 10, 2013. The last day to purchase this issue will be Thursday May 9th.

Here is the scan from the magazine:

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

Very quickly: Here are a few screen grabs from the first ‘Ender’s Game’ teaser footage and a slow motion video of the footage via @elfprince13 from PhiloticWeb.net, our sister site!