In Las Vegas last week to accept an award for Rising Star of Tomorrow at CinemaCon, Asa Butterfield did a brief Q&A with press and talked about what it was like to work with his fellow castmates and about his first time meeting Harrison Ford.
“When I first saw him I was like… “Oh my God! It’s Han Solo!” When a reporter advised him not to tell Harrison that, Asa assured him that he wouldn’t, then looked around jokingly with a look of worry on his face, “He’s not in here, is he?”, no doubt referring to Ford’s well-known tendency to bristle over mention of the Star Wars character.
Asa continued to praise him, “He’s an incredible actors but he’s also an amazing person. He’s really kind and really generous with his knowledge.”
When the topic turned to Gavin Hood, Asa had a lot of praise for him as well, mentioning again how well he knew the characters and what he wanted out of their performances. “Because he wrote the screenplay he really knew the characters back to front and he knew exactly what he wanted. And when he needed more oomph to the scene he was there to come on stage and he gave it all.”
Although he hadn’t heard of the book before the movie started casting, he read the novel right away and had several Skyping sessions about the character with Hood. “It really gave both of us an insight on how this was going to work. When I got the role I was over the moon.”
When asked what he thought fans would be most excited to see, Asa remained neutral on the topic, “The story stayed almost entirely truthful to the book. They had to age the characters up for obvious reasons but it all depends what they got out of the book. If they loved the Battle Room scenes then obviously that’s going to appeal to them but if they read the book for the morals behind it and the themes then that’s all still intact in the screenplay and I think it’s a really deep story.”
The franchise question, which is undoubtedly on the minds of many fans, came up as well. “I think it all depends on how well this does,” he said. He joked that unless the studio wanted to wait 15 or so years for him to reach Ender’s age in Ender’s Shadow, he wasn’t sure what would happen. (Be sure to read my editorial on my own thoughts on that)
Source: ShowbizJunkies via Ender News
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