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Tag: Alex Kurtzman

  • Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci in September Issue of Elle

    Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci in September Issue of Elle

    Alex-Bob-Elle

     

    Producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci spoke with Elle magazine for the September issue and talked Star Trek and Ender’s Game.

    Another of your upcoming films is the Ender’s Game adaptation, which hits theaters in November. What drew you to this project? 

    RO: I read that book as a child. The same uncle who got me into Star Trek actually got me to read that book. I just thought it was fascinating that you could have young protagonists in a very adult-themed book, dealing with real issues like war, peace and leaving your family. It didn’t talk down to anybody, and both children and adults liked it. At the time I read it, it seemed unfilmable, but today we finally live in an age where the technology is available to do it. All the pieces came together and it was something we just couldn’t pass up.

    I have to admit I’m a little confused by the photo and the magazine credit, since it’s clearly from an Asian magazine, but still love the photo of the two of them!

    Source: Cool Hunt

  • ‘Ender’s Game’ Producers Talk Book to Film with Wall Street Journal

    ‘Ender’s Game’ Producers Talk Book to Film with Wall Street Journal

    Kurtzman-Orci

    Ender’s Game producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci spoke with Barbara Chai of the Wall Street Journal recently and mentioned their personal history with the popular sci fi novel.

    What were some of the challenges you and director Gavin Hood faced in adapting Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” into a film?

    Orci: “Ender’s Game” was a book that we both loved from teenagehood. It was published in 1985 and I think we read it in high school, maybe even earlier. The challenge with the book is it’s very internal in that a lot of the narrative that occurs is within the character’s head and the trick is, how do you dramatize that? The answer is both through having some of those internal struggles be dramatically shown as scenes, and second, we have an advantage that the book does not have, and that is actors. We have great actors who can not only say things, but play things and play reactions on their faces and actually convey a lot of the emotion of the book. Thankfully now we have the technology to make it the grand adventure that it deserves to be. We have the technology to render a Zero-G environment in a totally believable and incredible way.

    Chai brought up the elephant in the room and asked them if they thought Card’s views would affect the film.

    Orci: I was never aware of in the book – and we’ve read it three or four times during our lifetime before we got into this movie – I never saw any sign in “Ender’s Game” of anything that offended Alex or me. The book is beautiful. It’s about tolerance, it’s about responsibility, it’s about growing up. We just tend to judge a book on its own merits. Nothing that anyone could say is going to remove our original reaction of how we perceive this beautiful book. For us, it’s just about the book.

    Kurtzman: Look, obviously it’s a First Amendment issue and Mr. Card is free to express whatever point-of-view he chooses to express, and we are free to disagree with him. At this point, that’s all I really want to say about it.

    I have to admit, Orci’s answer touches on why I continue to do this site despite disagreeing with Card’s views. In all my readings of the book, I’d never picked up on his personal views either.

    You can read the full interview at the WSJ.

  • Ender’s Potential as a Major Hollywood Franchise

    Ender’s Potential as a Major Hollywood Franchise

    In an interview published online yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Summit worldwide marketing president Nancy Kirkpatrick on her success in turning The Twilight Saga into a multi-billion dollar franchise across the globe. When talk turned to her next project, Ender’s Game, the words “franchise hopeful” were used.

    Post-Twilight, Kirkpatrick is turning her attention to franchise hopeful Ender’s Game, also based on a young-adult novel. The first movie opens in theaters Nov. 1, 2013.

    For anyone who might be worried about a woman who helped build the Twilight marketing success touching Ender’s Game, I’m sure she knows what she’s doing and therefore I’m not concerned. I don’t think we’ll be seeing Ender Wiggin pillow cases or Petra Arkanian Barbies.

    As book fans know, there’s no shortage of existing books in the Enderverse for them to make into movies, but with no news about whether young actors Asa Butterfield, Abigail Breslin, and Jimmy Jax Pinchak (the three Wiggins) or any of the actors playing Ender’s jeesh are signed on for more than one film, it seems safe to assume that they’re either waiting to see how well Ender’s Game performs come next November or keeping a very tight lid on a multiple film deal.

    As funny as it sounds since it’s taken nearly three decades to be adapted, of the original Ender Quartet, Ender’s Game strikes me as the most easily adaptable. Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind are all much more involved and complicated than Ender’s Game and therefore don’t seem to have as much blockbuster potential. They are better books than they ever could be movies.

    So where could a sequel take us? Allow me, for a moment, to take us into unthinkable land.

    Bob & AlexLook behind the scenes and you’ll find Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the men who have successfully taken pre-existing characters and taken them where no man has go– sorry, Star Trek teaser sickness took over for a second, but it’ll become relevant in a bit.

    Orci and Kurtzman have written and produced mega franchises such as Transformers, which took a line of beloved characters and put them in an entirely new storyline. The franchise to date has grossed billions of dollars.

    They wrote and produced the rebooted Star Trek, which many Trekkies know took our beloved characters and turned their world upside down. What emerged was a completely fresh slate for a wealth of pre-existing characters, modernized for today’s pop culture and successful to the tune of $385 million dollars. As most of you probably know by now, the first teaser for Star Trek Into Darkness is filling up Twitter feeds and Facebook timelines across the globe. It’s primed to be another smashing success in their new Star Trek universe.

    What I’m trying to say is, what if they took the characters they adapted into the Ender’s Game movie and simply took off into the sunset, leaving behind what is arguably a series too dull to be successful movies and another series (the Bean Quartet) that is completely separated from Ender. It may seem horrifying to die hard book fans, but for those fans who still pack theater seats eager to be entertained, the idea can be simply thrilling.

    Imagine a completely new set of movies based on the adventures of Ender, Valentine, Bean, Petra, Dink, Alai, and more. Would this excite you as much as it excites me?

    With a fresh cast and a fanbase that’s been building for 30 years, this could be the next franchise conquest for Kurtzman and Orci in their ever-growing line of science fiction blockbusters.

    I’m sure Nancy Kirkpatrick would be right on board with that.

    Source: Full article at THR.com 

  • ‘Ender’s Game’ Production Nearing Halfpoint

    ‘Ender’s Game’ Production Nearing Halfpoint

    Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci

    In a recent interview with producer Alex Kurtzman, MTV’s Kara Warner took the opportunity to inquire about his work on Ender’s Game.

    “I’m really proud of the work everybody’s done on ‘Ender’s.’ Particularly because it’s a very complicated sprawling book that a lot of people have tried for a very long time to figure out how to make,” Kurtzman told MTV.

    We already know that big changes are in order for the film, which has cast now 15 year-old Asa Butterfield as the young Ender Wiggin, who is actually only six when he’s shipped off to Battle School in the books. However, Kurtzman says he’s pleased with what director Gavin Hood has done with the script, saying that Hood had “in a miraculous way […] managed to distill down the essence of the book and the big moves to a very understandable clear format.”

    Kurtzman also comment about where they are in the production schedule. “We’re about halfway through it, maybe close to halfway but it’s been a wonderful shoot so far.”

    With tweets from the young cast continuing to pour out about their bonding on and off set, it does sound like things are going smoothly!

    Ender’s Game is set to hit theaters in March 2013.

    Source: MTV

  • Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci in ‘Soft Prep’ for Ender’s Game Movie

    Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci in ‘Soft Prep’ for Ender’s Game Movie

    Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci

    In an interview with Collider, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci reveal they are in “soft prep” for the Ender’s Game movie, which was recently acquired by Summit Entertainment.

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