Roberto Orci Talks about ENDER’S GAME Zero-Gravity Battle Sequences

Last month writers/producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Cowboys & Aliens) made a big Hollywood push for a film adaptation of Orsen Scott Card’s Ender’s Game with X-Men: Origins: Wolverine director Gavin Hood attached to helm the highly anticipated film project, from a script that he wrote. 

I would love to finally see this story get it's big screen debut, and this might be the time. If it does actually go through I really hope this creative team can bring it to life properly. I don’t have a lot of faith in it’s director though. Wolverine was a terrible film. 

In a recent interview with io9 Roberto Orci talked about how they visualize the zero-gravity battle sequences. When he was asked about he said,

You’ve got to have zero G training sequences. Are you kidding? We’re talking about shooting it every way you can: using tanks, using motion capture, using amazing acrobats, using an amazing space. But you have to have it, that’s part of the movie.

I never doubted the movie would be made without these sequences. They wouldn't have a Ender's Game movie if they didn't. io9 went on to  asked what Orci would like fans to know about their film adaptation. 

The hardest part is adapting a classic novel faithfully. And I think before, people were trying to get too clever with it and change things that didn’t need to be changed. Gavin Hood wrote an amazing script that is extremely faithful to the book, including the twists in it and the themes in it. And I think that will be the difference to getting it made.

Well, hearing that sparks a little bit of confidence in the project. Ender's Game is one of my all time favorite books, and I would hate to see it get butchered up on the big screen, but if they make a film faithful to the book, then that's all I need to know. The next step is to execute the production on an awesome level of epicness. 

What are your thoughts on what Orci had to say?

Here's the description of the book:

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. 

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

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