Summit Entertainment, the production company behind “The Twilight Saga” films, has acquired the rights to the youth-oriented “Ender’s Game” franchise. Auditions and casting calls are getting underway for the film’s starring and supporting roles. The movie will be shot in the New Orleans area and the extras and stand-ins will be hired there, as well as many crew members. The shoot is scheduled to run from February 24, 2012 through June 8, 2012.
14 year old British actor Asa Butterfield has been cast in the film’s lead role of Andrew “Ender” Wiggin. Butterfield is an accomplished and talented actor who’s credits include Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” “Nanny McPhee Returns,” “The Wolfman,” among others. He started acting at 7 years of age on Wednesday afternoons after school at the Young Actors Theatre, in his hometown of Islington, London. Butterfield was nominated in the category “Most Promising Newcomer” of the British Independent Film Awards, but he was beaten by Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire. MTV Networks’ NextMovie.com named him one of the “Breakout Stars to Watch for in 2011”.
South African filmmaker Gavin Hood is directing “Ender’s Game” from an adopted screenplay that he wrote himself. “Ender’s Game” is based on a 1985 science fiction novel of the same name by American author Orson Scott Card. Gavin Hood has directed such films as “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “Rendition,” and the Academy Award winning “Tsotsi”. Hood also acts occasionally, most notably in “In Enemy Hands” and the “Stargate SG-1” episode “Lockdown”.
“Ender’s Game” focuses around the Battle School, a space station used as a military training complex for children. The IF tests all children on Earth and selects the brightest for the Battle School for military training. Students are organized into armies with 40 members with a commander and assigned to conduct simulated battles in zero gravity. The Battle School forms in response to the need of highly skilled officers for the wars against an alien race called Formics (also known as “buggers”). In the futuristic setting, humankind develops interstellar travel, faster-than-light communication, various new weapons and defense mechanisms, and control over gravity.
Principal Actor Casting
See the post titled Headshot and Resume Information regarding how to submit for acting roles.
Please submit photos and resumes by mail only.
No phone calls or personal drop-offs.
Los Angeles:
John Papsidera
Automatic Sweat
5243 W. Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
New Orleans:
Elizabeth Coulon
1215 Prytania Street
Suite 409
New Orleans, LA 70130
Open casting calls will be posted here when scheduled.
Extras Casting
New Orleans:
Wendy Talazac
Talazac Casting
128 S. Olympia Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
Crew Members
New Orleans:
Experienced film crew members in the New Orleans area who wish to be considered for work on “Ender’s Game” can email a resume to the following:
This email is for CREW MEMBERS only. Absolutely NO ACTOR OR EXTRA SUBMISSIONS to this email address, they will be discarded and you will not be considered to work on the film.
Production Companies:
Do NOT send photos and resumes to the production companies, as they will most likely end up being thrown away. They do not cast the films, rather they hire casting directors who sort through the thousands of submissions.
Ender’s Game
K/O Paper Productions
100 Universal City Plaza
Building 5171
Universal City, CA 91608
Summit Entertainment, LLC
1630 Stewart Street
Suite 120
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Sierra/Affinity
9460 Wilshire Blvd.
5th Floor
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
Digital Domain
300 Rose Avenue
Venice, CA 90291
Oddlot Entertainment
9601 Jefferson Blvd.
Suite A
Culver City, CA 90232
Producers:
Roberto Orci
Alex Kurtzman
Gigi Pritzker
Linda McDonough
Orson Scott Card
Lynn Hendee
Bill Lischak
Mandy Safavi
Cliff Plumer
Ed Ulbrich
Director:
Gavin Hood
Starring:
Asa Butterfield – Andrew “Ender” Wiggin
Story:
It’s 2070, forty years since a devastating alien invasion was barely turned back, and the world is desperately searching for soldiers to lead them to victory when the “Buggers” come again. That’s why they’re drafting young children who pass a rigorous screening, and sending the best of them to the orbiting Battle School, where they are trained from childhood to be ready for war in the vertiginous reaches of space. Into the unending pressure of military training comes six-year-old Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, who struggles to keep his humanity even as the adult teachers, rivals among his fellow students, and the strange unseen influence of the alien invaders all threaten either to destroy him or to make him into someone he can’t bear to be.
