OSC On the Race Issue

Orson Scott Card posted on his official forum, Hatrack, about the Ender's Game script and the race issues.

Previously, OSC had issues with Warner Bros' demand that in Battle School there be "a handful of token characters from other races but every other child will be white." (see the report from AICN from 2002)

However, things have changed, according to Card:

Nobody is even thinking of making all the kids white; the only question has been whether to make the Battle School population reflect the racial distribution of Earth as a whole, or of America as a whole. And nobody's even DISCUSSING that right now (it's a past question raised by different people from those now working on the film), so for heaven's sake don't accuse the studio or being wrong on something that's not even being discussed, let alone decided.

Update From OSC

Orson Scott Card posted on his official forum, Hatrack, some details about the EG Movie:

1. We compress the action of the book to one year, and the youngest of the characters (Bean) is about nine or ten.

2. It's very hard to work with child actors, but it can be done, as witness the stellar performances of every child actor in Peter Pan and Neverland.

About Wolfgang Petersen:

Writers don't "pick" directors. The only power I had was to veto the ones who would have been horrible. Beyond that, we looked for directors who found the project interesting, who were on the short list of those capable of directing it AND of getting a studio to back the project with that director attached. What some folks don't seem to grasp is that the ONLY reason Warner Brothers picked up the Ender's Game movie project was that Wolfgang was attached. If Wolfgang were not the director, THERE WOULD BE NO PROJECT. We'd still be going begging to the studio doors. Wolfgang, not I, is driving the project. That's how Hollywood works, when it works at all.

... you want a director who can't bear a tough ending? A director who has no understanding of character? I'd rather NOT see Ender's Game be nothing but a special effect-driven extravaganza, thanks ...

OSC Interview on Scifi.com

Scifi interviewed Orson Scott Card about the upcoming Enderverse novels and the Ender's Game movie.

Here's what Card had to say about the film:

It's been reported that Warner Brothers is making a film adaptation of the Ender series. Where does that venture stand at the moment?


Card: Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are under option from Warner Brothers to be made into a feature film entitled Ender's Game. Wolfgang Petersen is slated to direct, and he is guiding the development of the script, along with Robert Chartoff and Lynn Hendee of Chartoff Productions; David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are writing the next draft of the script. Until there's a camera-ready script, nothing will be scheduled.