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Well, putting the numbers aside for a moment. Where would they go from EG ? I think the movie adaptation was wonderful. Battle and Command school was rushed a bit too much, but how else could they have really pulled it off? They did a remarkable job.
So Ender's Shadow is way darker WAY darker than Ender's Game. Achilles and Poke alone is rough enough without them being children. (This was also said about Stilsen and Ender: but this can't be aged up in quite the same way to have the same meaning.) While I think going the Shadow route would be the most effective, it definitely is a much more complex story to tell. Speaker for the Dead makes the most sense, but it is much less revered among readers mostly due to Ender's age jump. But it's still a very interesting story that could do well on the big screen.
I am just sad that people did not see Ender's Game. It is rare enough that there is a good adaptation to screen from book that it's a shame other circumstances surrounded the movie release. (Even worse that the circumstances relate in no way to the subject material.)
tldr: I personally would be interested in seeing the Shadow series, but I don't know how well it could be adapted. And if they went the route of Speaker I feel there would be less of an audience for it.
Posts: 121 | Registered: Mar 2005
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If ANY other Ender books were to be adapted to the screen, I would prefer a TV miniseries-style adaptation of Speaker for the Dead over any other option. Shadow of the Hegemon could work as a film, but it, Puppets, Giant, and Flight keep leaving unresolved plot threads, and there's no way they'd ever make a movie for each of those books due to some of the narrative and pacing. Ender in Exile would also make no sense as a movie, since half the action is contained in emails.
Perhaps the Aaron Johnston prequel books are more adaptable to film, but they're pretty straightforward alien invasion stories with a comic-book storyline (which makes sense, since they started life as comic books). And it would be hard for them to reconcile the continuity established in the movie version of Ender's Game, which had one Formic invasion and had Mazer Rackham as a pilot of a fighter jet.
Speaker for the Dead, however, would make a great miniseries. It can be done on a much lower budget, since there's little demand for over-the-top computer-generated special effects. The piggies are the only thing that would inflate the budget significantly; the sets would mostly be a small village and a forest, and they don't have to use any of the same actors from Ender's Game. The biggest continuity problem is that Valentine doesn't go with Ender at the end of the Ender's Game movie, so it they're pretending to pick up where Ender's Game left off, there would have to be some 'splaining to do.
Posts: 1029 | Registered: Apr 2007
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There are two possibilities: - Ride out the wave of the current Ender movie. - Adapt something else.
Assuming that anyone would be willing to follow the current movie, it would be Speaker, Ender's Shadow, or an original adventure. I'd want something altogether new -- I don't feel that anything existing would be particularly adaptable.
I'd prefer, however, that they adapt something else. Alvin Maker?
Posts: 1204 | Registered: Mar 2003
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The most logical thing for them to do would be to just make something up. Supposedly OSC is working on a new series of books that take place after EG, but have little to do with Ender, so there's that.
Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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There isn't going to be another movie, Ender's Game has bombed big time internationally. Films like these typically make 2-4 times more internationally, than domestically.
For example After Earth made 183 million outside USA. Ender's Game is heading towards 60-80 million internationally, which is an awful number for it.
Posts: 273 | Registered: Jul 2009
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Deadstick arrival in foreign markets probably didn't help. At least from my limited perspective, the film was very poorly supported for international release. It didn't find an audience, and the studio clearly didn't believe in it enough to invest in the advertising required.
I think the cooling effect of the potential media backlash kept the studio from really promoting the film properly. The more they pushed the release, the more gay-rights groups were going to push back. It's the reason I think I said years ago that no studio should touch this film with a 10 foot pole until OSC is long gone, and the author-motive is merely academic.
That and it was just a pile of crap, from the product to the marketing.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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from everything i've read so far i don't think the movie's a pile of crap, though i can't speak to the quality of the marketing (except to say i never saw any)
like honestly from how the HitB people talked about it it was just sort of an eh movie, not a standout in any way.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I am really kind of confused about why the international market is so poor for Ender's Game. Was the lack of a Will Smith-level name?
Posts: 428 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by millernumber1: I am really kind of confused about why the international market is so poor for Ender's Game. Was the lack of a Will Smith-level name?
The marketing kind of left you feeling indifferent towards the film.
An action-packed scifi epic doesn't need a big star. But it does need effective marketing.
Posts: 273 | Registered: Jul 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Aros: ... I'd prefer, however, that they adapt something else. Alvin Maker?
Setting aside the issue that "Seventh Son" is just as reliant on internal dialogue as "Ender's Game" is, can you imagine how the Alvin Maker saga, whose general plot outline is based on the life of LDS church founder Joseph Smith, would play in a press that already hates OSC for his views on gay marriage?
Enchantment might not be a bad candidate for a movie adaptation, I would think. Or maybe the Pastwatch Columbus story.
Posts: 124 | Registered: Jun 2013
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The portrayal of Christianity and Islam in Pastwatch is too fraught with potential for outrage. No studio in their right mind would touch that with a ten-foot pole.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but the only big screen adaptation of an OSC novel I think really needs to be made is Enchantment. Numerous other works could be more effective as TV series or miniseries, or in alternative formats such as the audio drama version of Ender's Game. But Enchantment could really work as a film, with a very appealing-to-Hollywood mix of romance, drama, action, and fantasy, while not demanding a super-inflated budget for special effects. The only stumbling block I can think of is the fact that they'd need to portray or hand-wave the fact that they're speaking Proto-Slavonic in the ninth century and English/Russian in the twentieth.
Posts: 1029 | Registered: Apr 2007
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Been away from the board for a while, but wanted to revisit this now that the (mostly) final numbers have come in.
First off, Orincoro - I was definitely wrong about how well I thought EG would do overseas, and you were very much on target. While it did manage to "gross" more overseas (only just), it really didn't come close to my initial assumptions - and only barely crested the very lowest end of my last assumption range.
From a "profit" perspective, I agree that a lot of that gross is a mirage because of costs/etc associated with overseas distribution.
The "final" numbers look to be up on boxofficemojo.com (looks like there still may be a trickle coming in from Venezuela). EG's overall gross came to $125.5M ($61.7M domestic / $63.8M foreign), with the foreign take limping up to 50.8%.
That's pretty much in the basement with regards to comparable films (which were generally in the 50-75% range for foreign take). Add to that the fact that those percentages only add onto a pretty dismal domestic tally, and the final total was far below all the other movies I had listed (even Spiderwick Chronicles) - and was just more than half of After Earth's overall total.
I still haven't seen it - but probably will get around to it at some point. Maybe once it comes to FX or something.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I don't know about other countries, but over here the reviews for the movie weren't all that good (1,5 - 2 stars out of 5). And the movie was judged solely on its own merit. Combined with the fact that the book itself is not all that well known outside of a certain subset of readers, it is not that surprising to me that the figures are low. Those who wanted to see it in theatres only had a short window to do so, compared to other movies. And the number of theatres showing it was also less than one would have expected.
Posts: 1100 | Registered: Apr 2008
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: First off, Orincoro - I was definitely wrong about how well I thought EG would do overseas, and you were very much on target. While it did manage to "gross" more overseas (only just), it really didn't come close to my initial assumptions - and only barely crested the very lowest end of my last assumption range.
Well, I had seen it, which you hadn't. I think having seen it, plus some of the foreign marketing (what little there was), I could see it wasn't going to be a success.
It was poorly conceived from the beginning. A coming of age story that they didn't want to market as ET, and also didn't want to market as starship troopers, that ended up attracting almost no one. Is it for kids? Is it a date movie? Nobody really knew. Fans saw it, but not with a lot of zeal. It was just a mess.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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To me, the problem with Ender's Game was two fold.
The movie's first problem was the dialogue. It could have been written so much better than it was. Asa Butterfield did the best he could (And I know he can act) with what he was given.
The other problem was that they didn't focus on the right things in the film. They didn't focus on the relationships he built with those in his army. Petra in the film was a LOT more present than Petra in the book. There should have been a greater focus on Bean and Alai.
Also, they got rid of Eros and threw Ender on a planet they had taken from the formics that conveniently had a formic queen alive and well less than a kilometer away from the human base? It would have been infinitely more effective if they would have left Eros in, an older Ender Wiggin finding an egg at the end, and even some scenes of the political aftermath of the Xenocide to help set up for a possible Shadow series or sequel.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: To me, the problem with Ender's Game was two fold.
The movie's first problem was the dialogue. It could have been written so much better than it was. Asa Butterfield did the best he could (And I know he can act) with what he was given.
The other problem was that they didn't focus on the right things in the film. They didn't focus on the relationships he built with those in his army. Petra in the film was a LOT more present than Petra in the book. There should have been a greater focus on Bean and Alai.
Also, they got rid of Eros and threw Ender on a planet they had taken from the formics that conveniently had a formic queen alive and well less than a kilometer away from the human base? It would have been infinitely more effective if they would have left Eros in, an older Ender Wiggin finding an egg at the end, and even some scenes of the political aftermath of the Xenocide to help set up for a possible Shadow series or sequel.
You mean it was just badly written. Well yeah.
But this book never was going to be a good movie. At least, I never ever thought so.
Now, it would make a fantastic miniseries.
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I thought the buggers had used Eros as a base in the books, and the humans had emptied it out.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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EG and the Shadow books would make a much better TV series than films. Ten-episode seasons.
Maybe the CW would do it, hiring a lot of really attractive young people and adding romantic triangles. That would still be better than this truncated, hollow film.
Posts: 1144 | Registered: Feb 2001
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