Digital Domain, the company working on the special effects for the Ender’s Game movie, released a statement today announcing that a previously top secret project to digitally age down actor Asa Butterfield to appear six years old in the film has been abandoned.
The project, which was internally named Project AAA (Asa Anti-Aging) by staffers, was started in response to several angry fans posting on Facebook arguing that there was no way that then-14 year-old Butterfield looked to be the age of six, the age of Ender Wiggin in the books.
The goal was to completely digitally render Asa Butterfield’s height, facial features, and stature to resemble Butterfield at a much younger age. His family provided photos of the actor from his primary school days to assist the team in any way they could.
In the end, the efforts proved to be too time consuming and with so much manpower put into Project AAA, efforts on other areas of the film fell to the wayside. As many fans may have noticed, no trailer has yet been released for the movie.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, one anonymous staff member could only say, “It pains me to say this, but fans will simply have to use their imagination and pretend that Asa is six years-old.” In an effort to alleviate any fan furor over the issue, Summit has stated that they will be aging up all the other characters and changing the name of Battle School to Battle University.
“It is our hope that if all the other soldiers are supposed to be college age, Ender will then by default look exceptionally younger,” tweeted Summit.
It’s unclear at this point just how fans will react to this news. What’s your take?
Source: THR and Digital Domain
UPDATE: Just an FYI that I made this whole story up for April Fool’s Day. 😛
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