Thanks to a photo by @charloteburows, we can see that Empire magazine has a cool behind the scenes photo of Asa Butterfield as Ender (right in white), Suraj Partha as Alai (center), and director Gavin Hood (left).
The article was released online in May with an exclusive photo of Graff watching Ender in the Battle Room.
We’ll try to get a better look at the image soon!
I’m a bit late this week, but to be fair, there wasn’t that much to report about our young cast as far as social media announcements go – up until today, that is. Let’s have the good news first: Brandon Soo Hoo graduated High School. Congratulations, Brandon!
Also, Jimmy “Jax” Pinchak announced today via twitter that he will be joining castmates Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin and Harrison Ford at Comic Con.
Meanwhile, Abigail Breslin – again breaking the record for most tweets per day – has been alternating sleeping on the couch (due to a bugger infestation of her room, no less) and celebrating half-Christmas with glittery wintery images on Instagram, while Asa Butterfield has been relaxing with his family in beautiful, sunny Greece.
Aramis Knight, on the other hand, has made an effort to make the world a better place in this years annual “One Child At A Time Celebrity Basketball Game” on June 23. For him, and I’m sure for many of the spectators, it was a dream come true.
Finally, Khylin Rhambo has announced that he is changing his name. Personally, I welcome the change, as I’m never quite sure if I’m spelling “Rhambo” correctly.
– Anderson
As usual, the young Ender’s Game cast has been really active on Twitter this week, with Abigail Breslin taking home the “Most Obsessive Tweeter” award with 33 original tweets since Monday.
Moises Arias has been busy promoting his new film The Kings of Summer, which was released this week. He attended a Q & A at the Landmark Theater in LA on Wednesday. Check out Twitter user Devan Abharis photograph of the event (as retweeted by Moises himself).
Moises also spoke to Papermag about The Kings of Summer. He briefly mentions Ender’s Game, saying:
It was honestly one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. It was inspiring to see the professionalism. The cinematography! The special effects look amazing. I’m excited. I’ve gotten to work with the most amazing actors and the most amazing child actors right now.
Hailee Steinfeld has been spending her time filming the Civil War drama The Keeping Room (with Sam Worthington) and photographing cows in Romania.
Asa Butterfield has finished school and has left London for warmer pastures as well, spending his summer vacation in Greece.
Suraj Partha is still travelling the world. After France and England, he is rounding off his trip with a visit to Disneyland.
Since it’s been a pretty slow couple of days, I decided to stalk the Ender’s Game cast’s twitter and facebook accounts in the hopes of turning up some interesting tidbits. And guess what, the kids have been BUSY! Well, all except Asa Butterfield, who has apparently decided to spend the next week or so in front of his computer.
He did, however, hang out with Suraj Partha only a couple of days ago, when Suraj visited London on his trip to Europe. Hailee Steinfeld, on the other hand, stayed in the States to spend some days in Hollywood being honored by Max Mara. And Moises Arias just returned from a week of roughin’ it in Cabo San Lucas.
Jimmy Pinchak was in New Jersey yesterday visiting Jenkinson’s Boardwalk. Meanwhile, Aramis Knight has been busy planning to participate in the “One Child At A Time”-Celebrity Basketball match coming up on June 23.
In a video published just a few days ago from an interview done at last year’s Young Hollywood Awards, where Asa Butterfield received the Breakthrough Award, he talks a bit about filming Ender’s Game and what he was doing in LA at the time of the awards.
I’ve just finished filming Ender’s Game and I’m over here to do all the motion capture for that, it’s various training routines or fighting in zero g, which is amazing fun to film.
He’s also got a hilarious story about the mispronunciation of his name. Watch it in the video below!
Let this be a lesson to me that the next time I hit the snooze button on my phone alarm, I should check email first. Haha!
Empire Online has just released a new still from Ender’s Game showing Ender in the Battle Room with Graff watching nearby. We get a really amazing look at the gate from the inside along with a better idea at just how massive the Battle Room is.
Empire spoke with Asa about the Battle Room scenes. Some of it we’ve heard before, some of it we haven’t, including the Battle Room scene he’s most proud of.
During their training, Ender and his unit take on a lot of other teams in the Battle Room. Any stunts you’re particularly proud of pulling off?
There’s a really cool sequence where I’m sort of spinning over backwards and I let go of my guns. They’re floating by my side just going along. As I push myself through these two stars, I spin back over and grab the guns, then shoot the people around me. I loved doing that.
He also mentions that they spent a month and a half filming scenes in the harness, which should be comforting for fans that were concerned by something author Orson Scott Card said last year at a book signing that one scene in the Battle Room is too many.
Source: Empire
Asa Butterfield will be working with Chloe Moretz again next year as Variety reports that the two young actors are now tied to a film called ‘The White Circus’.
“Circus” is an adventure-romance that takes place on a snowy New Year’s Eve, when a young pilot crashes his plane into a war-torn town on his first mission. There, he falls in love with a beautiful cabaret singer, befriends a talking circus bear and incites the townsfolk to liberate themselves from a despot.
The film will begin shooting in Germany in February 2014.
With schedules for both Asa and Hailee filling up, it makes an Ender’s Game fan start to worry about the stars having time for filming sequels, should there be any…
Source: Variety
Asa Butterfield spoke with Hollywood.com recently and reiterated how tough his training was for Ender’s Game.
“It was painful,” he says. “There was all sorts of marching, running. ‘Left face, right face’ where you turn in different directions.” Butterfield admits that the rigorous boot camp helped him form a close bond with his fellow teenage costars — mostly because if they didn’t keep up with one another, they all suffered. “If one person in the group of about 100 extras, and 10 or so cast [members], made a mistake, everyone had to do 10 push-ups. And we’d be jogging and if one person fell behind, we’d have to do 10 push-ups. Then [the trainers would] extend it… because they’re a bit mean [laughs].”
I’d like to use that quote as another chance to say that this is why Ender isn’t 6 in the movie. You can’t really scoff at the ethics of the International Fleet’s practices and then demand that real little kids get put through this kind of an ordeal just for entertainment.
Anyone worried about Butterfield’s understanding of the complicated character Ender Wiggin may feel better about what he has to say about Ender’s moral complexity.
“One of the main ones Gavin and I talked about was leadership,” Butterfield says. “Ender’s way of leading and communicating with other people — not just children, but adults — is completely different. It’s one of the things that makes him shine in the school.” The actor sees Ender’s two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, as ends of a scale that the character drifts between over the course of the film. “One’s completely selfless and open, Peter is the epitome of the worst human being. Ender knows he doesn’t want to be Peter, but at times he can’t help having his dark side shine through.”
Asa also mentioned Ender’s dark side during the “Meet the Fleet” Google+ Hangout from earlier this week:
The interview is a great read, so be sure to head over to Hollywood.com to read the entire thing.
Ho, launchies! If you weren’t able to make it to the live Hangout, here’s a replay of it below!
Don’t forget to join some of your Ender’s Game fansites as we do the Meet the Fleet Q&A with Ender’s Game director Gavin Hood, producer Roberto Orci, and star Asa Butterfield on the Ender’s Game YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EndersGameMovie
The hangout will begin at 1 PM PT! (in just about half an hour!)
Here’s another interview Asa Butterfield did while in Vegas for CinemaCon done by PopSugarTV.
Asa mentioned again what an honor it was to be cast as Ender, mentioning the dedicated fanbase the story has built up over the years. “The story’s become such a cult almost, it’s got such a big following. It’s like a family and for me and the cast to become a part of that, it’s special.”
Since Asa’s last film before Ender’s Game was the CGI-heavy film Hugo, he was asked if that made it any easier doing a movie that involved so much green screen.
“Working against green screens, it’s still different than working against a live person. You just have to have a really strong imagination and Gavin and all the effects people showed us what you call “pre-vis”. So we had and idea of what it was going to look like so that let us play against where everything was in the space.”
The fans’ number one concern is of course how true to the book the movie will be and while we’re all anticipating a lot of changes in the film adaptation, Asa insists that the message will remain intact, “After watching the film you’ll still get the same message as you would from reading the book.”
So… in other words, I’ll be all teary eyed and have an aching heart at the end? 😉
Source: Pop Sugar TV
Asa Butterfield did several press interviews while at CinemaCon 2013 and the latest to come out is one from io9. They focused their talk mainly on the Battle Room, but also touched a bit upon Ender and Valentine. As an added bonus, Asa casually drops a mention about the mind game!
The cast was trained by an astronaut, who came to teach them about how one really moves in zero gravity.
“You have to move really slowly… fluidly and smoothly. When you’re in the harnesses to stop yourself from falling at the waist, which is where they’re connected, you have to be tensed up. So keeping actions smooth whilst having your whole body completely tensed is surprisingly difficult.”
Asa also talks about Ender’s age, which had previously been speculated to be anywhere from 10 to 15. In the interview he mentions that the cast had to be aged up to 13 to 14.
“You can’t find — at least as not that I’m aware — a six-year-old actor that can play that sort of a character, it’s complex and it’s physically demanding. That was the first issue, so they changed it from being six to 13 or 14.”
When asked what he thought was Ender’s hardest form of psychological torture, he mentioned Ender’s separation from Valentine.
“Probably one of the hardest scenes for Ender was leaving his sister, back on Earth. I think that’s one of the things that really damaged him. As you can see in the mind game, as well.”
I’ve read that there were lake scenes in the trailer, so that’s possibly the goodbye people mentioned rather than their initial goodbye. There’s a lot more to the interview, so be sure to check it out at io9.
In a recent interview with Asa Butterfield, IGN got the answer to a question that has been floating around for months: Will the movie combine the storylines of Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow?
No, there’s nothing from Ender’s Shadow. It’s all from Ender’s Game.
They also asked what he thought about Ender’s Game possibly becoming another Star Wars.
Well I hope so. I think it’s got a very good possibility to be. I think it’s unlike any other science fiction thing I’ve seen. It’s amazing. A lot of science fiction films today are just about sort of lasers and explosions, but the best are the ones that have a lot more about character and theme; and that’s one of the key parts of Ender’s Game – the story. There’s ideas behind it, about what makes human beings tick and that sort of thing.
It’s interesting that he talks about this because I was just having this conversation with my husband the other day. We had gone to see Oblivion and the week before that we were debating what makes good sci-fi and the hopes we had for the great lineup of sci-fi movies this year.
Oblivion, though gorgeous and grand, ultimately failed in the story. It tried very hard, but there were a lot of things about the plot that simply fell apart and the character of Jack Harper just wasn’t what it needed to be to really draw the audience in. That Asa understands this seems to be a great sign that they’ve taken steps to ensure this doesn’t happen with Ender’s Game.
Asa also showed a deep understanding for Ender’s character in relation to his siblings Peter and Valentine, “Ender’s character is very much based on his siblings, Peter and Valentine. Valentine is very kind and open, she’s like the nicest human being, whereas Peter is selfish, arrogant and horrible. Ender is stuck in the middle of them. So the story shows you that everyone has their darker and lighter side and that no matter how hard you try to be a good person you always have that dark place in you.”
Asa also confirms that the film is aiming for a PG-13 rating, something most of us assumed at this point, but it was good to hear it from Ender himself.
When asked to liken the visuals to another sci-fi film out there, Asa didn’t feel as though there was one.
I think the visuals of it are very, very original. Because the battle room is just a glass sphere, and because Battle School is in space, it allows you to see out. You can see stars, you can see Earth, you can see all of the colors from the sun and the sea and the green of the land. And it gives a very original and sort of beautiful look to the film that is unlike anything you’d see in a sci-fi film. And that’s contrasted by the metal and the orderedness of the station. So you have these two contrasting elements: the freedom of the battle room and the ordered look of the dorms and the corridors.
There’s more to the interview so be sure to check it out at IGN.com.