Director Gavin Hood and Summit Entertainment are set to bring a sci-fi adaptation to life with Ender’s Game, a film based on the 1985 novel of the same title. With a release date already set, casting is deep underway, and while the lead has been confirmed, the important supporting role of Colonel Hyrum Graff may bring an old sci-fi favorite back to the genre.
Variety reported that among a list of people they are seeking out for the role of Graff, fan favorite Harrison Ford is one of them. Ford would join Hugo titular star Asa Butterfield, who is playing the main role of Ender in the film.
Viggo Mortensen was originally supposed to play Graff until negotiations between the studio and the actor broke down. Now, before they get to shooting early next year, both the director and Summit are in search to fill the very vital supporting character.
Graff acts as a mentor and essentially fills the role of father to Ender as the boy trains at a Battle School that preps the kids for war in intergalactic battle.
The synopsis of the novel goes a little something like this:
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut–young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers, Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If the world survives, that is.
Ender’s Game is set to be released on March 15th, 2013
