Game for it!

Huzzah! A friend has written to me with news that the much vaunted movie of Ender's Game gives one grounds for hope. Having seen Hollywood recently rip the heart and soul out of one of my favourite children's books (i.e. The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper) and then defecate on the remains (i.e. they turned it into this) I'm intensely suspicious.

In fact the bastards almost have a scorched earth policy towards classics nowadays. Clearly there are some movie execs who would rather rush out a shite version of a kids' classic than let the title go to another studio that might wait a couple of years (or decades!) and then do it better and more lucratively. (Just consider the early treatments for a Lord of the Rings film, think what we were spared, but also consider that an even crummier and more rushed version of Tolkien even than Peter Jackson's effort would have been nowhere near as aristically - i.e. financially - rewarding.)

Who would my Ender be? Answer: I wouldn't have just one. I'd have a regular army of Enders from the age of six (when the story kicks off - and I use the phrase advisedly) through to sixteen. It's an approach that can work. Anyone who's seen the TV-version of the life of J M Barrie (which was vastly superior to the drippy Depp and Winslett version) will know what I'm talking about. Ideally though they'd all be cast by Pippa Hall (i.e. she who discovered Jamie Bell, David from I am David, the Narnia kids, the pretty/ugly boy in Eragon, and most recently the chillingly good Asa Butterfield in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) - and if we have to have an English Ender then so what? Beware the long shadow of Jake Lloyd!

And the director? Well, it's got to be Spielberg! Hasn't it? Just provided that he get's back to where he was with Minority Report, with maybe a dash of Empire of the Sun! And who knows? We could end up with the next Christian Bale as a souvenir!

Game on!