Summit posted a new photo collage to their Ender’s Game social media channel today with a new image of Mazer Rackham. And while it’s not really anything new, it’s still an image we haven’t seen before. Hopefully as we get closer we’ll start to see tv spots and clips. I know I want to see character profile clips!
Not sure how I missed this new still from last week, but here’s a new look at Ender and his Launchy group with Graff, who has a really odd stance here. This one is from the Boston Globe talking about “trouble ahead” with the fall movie season. (via Ender News)
So far this is the biggest size available, but if we get a bigger one we’ll be sure to let you know!
Also in new imagery is a montage of Petra posted to the official Ender’s Game social media channels today.
The shot of Petra standing is a new one. I’m still a little bothered by her really long hair. Since I have long hair myself, I know what a bother hair that length can be, so it doesn’t make much sense to me that she’d have it at this length in Battle School. What do you guys think?
The LA Times has published a set visit report and an interview with director Gavin Hood and gives us a bit more insight on how he came up with the Battle Room’s design. In addition to that, we have a photo of Ender and Bean in the Battle Room!
As written in the novel, the Battle Room feels like a big, dark room, and the “Ender’s Game” combat situations unfold on something akin to personal computers.
“You had to feel it was the real thing — not a video game on a screen,” Orci said. “Visually, it had to be visceral, a you-are-there experience.”
Hood says two chance visits to Los Angeles landmarks — Griffith Observatory for a planetarium show and Disney Hall for a symphony concert — helped him solve two of his most pressing visual obstacles.
During the planetarium show, Hood realized that the battling spaceships could fly around Ender and his subcommanders like so many spinning galaxies inside the domed Griffith theater, immersing the cast (and the audience) in the clashes. And in watching Gustavo Dudamel lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the filmmaker figured out that Ender could conduct his team of pilots as if he were guiding them through a prestissimo symphony — front and center, orchestrating everyone’s movements in harmony.
Hood’s production designers also enveloped the Battle Room with panoramic windows, so that the cadets were both figuratively and literally floating amid the stars. “What is the point of going into space and being stuck in a black box?” Hood said.
You can read the entire piece at LA Time’s Hero Complex.
We first reported a couple of weeks ago that Funko was going to be releasing Pop! Vinyl figures for Ender and Petra, but no images were available. Thanks to a tip from @franiahs and @AsanatorWorld, we get to see what the figures will look like!
Here’s Ender in a Dragon Army flash suit with a cute little flash gun!
And here’s Petra in a Salamander Army flash suit!
The figures will be released sometime in November and can already be pre-ordered for $9.99 each from Entertainment Earth.
I’m sure I speak for most of you that when those leaked character posters came out, we all just kind of reacted like this:
Now we can react like that to this one of Khylin Rhambo as Dink Meeker, which is unofficial, but still amazing for the fun/cool factor.
Khylin posted this to his Instagram today with credit to Ricky Middlesworth. Looks so legit, though I wish some names were on it!
It’s Friday, so here’s a bit of fan art for you guys to start your weekend. We’re now 69 days from Novender 1st!
This one was done by ~Jdbag75 on Deviantart and depicts Ender in the Battle Room firing his flash gun.
As the days tick down to the release of Ender’s Game, we’ll start to see more merchandise being released. One thing we can look forward to are Pop! Vinyl figures from Funko for Ender and Petra.
Thanks to a tip from EnderWiggin.net reader Bruna, we found pre-order pages for the Ender and Petra figures on Entertainment Earth. If you’re not sure what they are by name, you might recognize them from the photo below.
No photos are yet available for the Ender’s Game figures, but we’ll keep an eye out for you Launchies! Funko sells their figures on Amazon, so they’ll probably eventually show up there.
Hopefully it’s not just Ender and Petra! A Bean figure would probably do well and surely they’ll do one for Graff/Harrison Ford, no?
Those of you that have been waiting for more information about the upcoming Ender’s Game Board Game by Cryptozoic Entertainment can now have a peek at the game! Thanks to a tip from @AllUsGeeks on Twitter, who linked to ICV2.com.
Here’s a brief description of the game:
Ender’s Game: Battle School is a two-player game set in the zero-gravity arena of the International Fleet’s Battle School. Players take the role of either Ender Wiggin and the Dragon Team or Bonzo Madrid and the Salamander Team, and then use Commander cards with special abilities (some for the whole team, some that only help the commander) to attempt to capture the other team’s gates or freeze opposing team players with laser-light guns. The player who completes either of the goals first (capturing all the gates or freezing the opposing commander) wins.
The MSRP will be $25.00. In addition, here is a list of what comes with the game:
List source: Pop Cultcha
Although we just posted an image that is from Entertainment Weekly’s Fall Movie Preview, turns out that was the bonus tablet image. The image above, which shows Mazer Rackham looking at Ender while Graff gives Ender an angry look, is the actual image from the print issue on stands today. (look for the Anchorman 2 issue)
In the brief article, Gavin Hood talks about how when he told his visual effects supervisor what he wanted for the Battle Room, “his eyes nearly popped out of his head”.
HUGE thanks to my friend Michelle for helping me view this on her iPad!
Source: Entertainment Weekly tablet edition
Update: This image is the bonus tablet photo from EW. For the Fall Movie Preview image, click here.
We’ve seen a slightly different version of this image from Entertainment Weekly and with the new Fall Movie Preview issue on stands this week, we’ve got yet another new photo of Ender as a launchie. In this photo, he grips a bar at the gate to the Battle Room with Graff smiling with approval behind him.
Any speculation on why Graff would be the one to take Ender to the Battle Room personally? Why wouldn’t Ender go with his launch group? Give us your thoughts!
Source: Dread Central
The other day, Forbes did an article about how they do something pretty cool called the “Fictional Fifteen” in which they determine who are the richest fictional characters out there. And while Ender unfortunately did not make the list (he’d have ranked #1, beating out the likes of Scrooge McDuck and Carlisle Cullen) because of too many unknown factors, they did lay out how they came to the conclusion that he’s worth about as much as Bill Gates at a cool $66 billion dollars.
After the Formic War in Ender’s Game, there was a lot of geopolitical strife, conquest and wars. But at the end of it all, Ender’s brother Peter Wiggin created a one-world government. It’s stated in the books that Starways Congress was basically the next step in evolution from that government, so we’ll say that the Yen became the world’s official currency when Peter Wiggin ended up running everything.
Card’s universe post-Ender’s Game is remarkably geopolitically (and technologically) stable. Three thousand years in the future, the only technology that’s really advanced significantly is genetic engineering –in part because humans took advanced technology from the alien Formics, but never figured out the physics of why that technology worked. So we’ll operate under the assumption that the economics of Ender’s universe is similarly stable.
So now we can make a guess at the value of the Yen before it was used as the base for the new Starways Congress dollar, and figure out how Ender’s year 5189 net worth of $400 trillion SCD translates to 2013 U.S. Dollars.
[…]
Ender’s $400 trillion Starways Congress dollars are worth about 16,920,473,773,265 modern-day Yen. If we convert that to U.S. dollars at the 1985 exchange rate, the figure we arrive at is a little more than $66.6 billion. That means Ender Wiggin’s is worth about as much as Bill Gates.
Don’t we all wish even more now that we had a friend like Jane?
Read the full article at Forbes.com. Thanks to Anthony for the tip!
Here are 100 hi-res screencaps of the official film clip Mazer Rackham’s Run that Summit debuted at the Ender’s Game Experience at San Diego Comic Con 2013. Watch the video below!
Check out this hi-res image of Harrison Ford addressing Battle School students. Since they’re dressed in yellow, these are likely Launchies. As for the video they’re watching, it’s likely Mazer Rackham’s Run:
Thanks to Summit for the image! This image first appeared in the print edition of Empire magazine.