He’ll appear on our screens next month in Martin Scorsese’s kiddie adventure Hugo, and now Asa Butterfield looks to have nabbed another high profile role, nabbing an offer to play the titular hero in the adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s acclaimed sci-fi novel Ender’s Game.
Gavin Hood, who last brought the world X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is directing the film, which will attempt to bring to life Card’s tale of a future Earth where mankind is under threat from a nasty insect race known as the Formics. Faced with yet another impending attack, an international fleet selects and trains the world’s most promising and prodigious youngsters to become great leaders capable of out-fighting the alien foe. Among them is the book’s hero, one Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, who turns out to be a bit of a tactical whizz in the same way that Roger Federer plays a bit of tennis.
Card’s 1985 book has been a target for film studios for years, with copious numbers of scripts produced (even by the author himself) yet very little forward motion, likely because of the story’s controversially unflinching attitude to violence in the vicinity of young kids. Hood became attached to take a crack at the script last year and now appears to have taken on the big chair. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are also producing along with Card himself.
Butterfield, a veteran of Son Of Rambow and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, is certainly a solid shout as Ender. If it works – and that’s a big if, even assuming it gets going this time – there’s plenty of material for follow-ups as Card has had time to write several more books in the series. Whichever way you look at it, the original book is both effective and devastating, and we're optimistic that some of that comes across onscreen.