Orson Scott Card

The new trailer for “Ender’s Game” received a prominent rollout online Tuesday afternoon, with director Gavin Hood (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine”), producer Robert Orci and star Asa Butterfield participating in a Google+ hangout that coincided with the premiere of the promotional spot for the sci-fi adventure adapted from the novel by Orson Scott Card. Set in a near future in which an alien race known as the Formics have attacked Earth, the movie stars Butterfield as Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a bright boy who’s recruited to help humanity face future threats. Guided in his growth by Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford), Ender advances from Battle School to Command School and soon finds himself under the tutelage of the legendary Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley, the Oscar-winning actor who’s getting a lot of screen time in fantastic films these days). “They know our strategies. […]

Orson Scott Card’s contribution to “Adventures of Superman” will be delayed after the story’s illustrator, Chris Sprouse, bowed out of the project. DC Comics has been under fire since announcing Card would contribute a story to the first collected issue of the comic, due out May 29. Card’s involvement drew the ire of gay advocates, who called for boycotts of the comic and petitioned DC to drop the “Ender’s Game” author due to his anti-gay rhetoric. Card is an outspoken opponent of homosexuality and a board member of the National Organization for Marriage, which seeks to ban same-sex marriage. Sprouse — the Eisner-winning comic artist whose work includes such titles as “Tom Strong,” “X-Men” and “Justice League America” — cited the controversy in his decision to step down as the illustrator of the story by Card and Aaron Johnston. MORE: […]

GUEST COMMENTARY Superman is a character that stands for truth, justice and the American way, but should creators who work on his comics be held to that same level of virtue? Last week, DC announced “Adventures of Superman,” a new series reprinting comics that are initially released digitally, and the first issue features a story by Aaron Johnston and Orson Scott Card. Card is a staunch, vocal opponent of homosexuality and a board member of the National Organization for Marriage, a group actively working to keep same-sex marriage illegal, and his personal views have Super-fans furious. At last check, an online petition to remove Card from the title is 732 signatures short of its goal of 10,000, and stores in Dallas and San Francisco have publicly announced that they won’t be carrying the first issue of “Adventures of Superman.” These […]

At 24 Frames, our sister blog, there’s a stirring of news about the long-sought Hollywood adaptation of “Ender’s Game.“… Fans of Orson Scott Card and his seminal science-fiction work “Ender’s Game” were despondent last year when the author revealed that he thought the movie could be hitting the rocks. But the project about a boy hero is now back in active development, sources say, as independent production company Odd Lot Entertainment pushes forward on a movie version of the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel. Most interesting, sources  say, there’s now a big-name filmmaker involved with the project: Gavin Hood, who directed the Oscar-winning “Tsotsi” and last year’s comic book franchise “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” Hood has done a rewrite of Card’s most recent script and is developing the project as a director. That level of involvement doesn’t mean a filmmaker will wind […]