Casting Rumor: Jacob Leinbach to Portray Battle School Student "Mick"

A credible source informed us today that Jacob Leinbach, an American actor best known for his role as "Brad" in the coming of age drama The Wise Kids, will be portraying Battle School student "Mick" in the upcoming Ender's Game movie.

Mick is the older student who, in the novel, approaches Ender his first time in the mess hall, steals his pudding, and admits he's nothing really more than "half-iced bugger-fodder." He advises Ender to "kiss butts" if he has to so that he doesn't end up like him, the only student from his original launch group who doesn't yet command his own army.

Jacob began acting at age six when he was casted as "Theo" in a local theater production of Pippin.  He later appeared as orphaned child "Michael" in the WWII short Kilroy was Here and in the 2009 sci-fi thriller Eyeborgs.

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"Ender's Game" Release Date Pushed to November 1st, 2013

Summit Entertainment has announced today that the Ender's Game film, previously expected to hit U.S. theaters on March 15, 2013, has been pushed back to a November 1st, 2013 release date.

As of right now, most sources seem fairly unsure as to why the release date has been moved to November, though many are speculating that it is due to production issues and the intense visual effects work needed to bring Ender's Game to the big screen.

We will add more info here as we find things out -- stay tuned!

Edit: Producer Roberto Orci just tweeted the following: "dont mean to make you wait a bit longer, but we just got a ridiculously good release date for #EndersGame. Nov 1st, 2013 - thanks 4 input!"

From a financial stand-point, the holiday season has proven to be a  great time of year to release a blockbuster such as Ender's Game and Summit is probably more than thrilled to occupy this time slot, though it is very close to Catching Fire, also by Summit, set to open November 22, 2013. Are they possibly trying to merge fanbases? The Hollywood Reporter suggests they might be:

Lionsgate and Summit hope to boost interest in Ender's Game by opening it so closely to Catching Fire, since they can use the Hunger Games sequel to publicize Ender's Game. Also, delaying the release will allow Summit and Lionsgate to market and publicize a fully finished film. (Hood is still shooting.)

Edit: Variety is reporting that "an informed source indicated that the November date may have greater potential for the start of a potential franchise film and will allow Summit to take advantage of promo opportunities at next year's Comic-Con in July."

Keep your eyes peeled for the production blog update this Wednesday -- perhaps the release date push will be addressed then.

Only 571 days to go! ;)

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New Casting: Edrick Browne as Eros Technical Officer "Hendi"

IMDB

According to a reliable source, Edrick Browne,  currently filming on Quentin Tarrintino's film Django Unchained and who can also be seen in this year's horror-thriller Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, has been casted as "Hendi," a technical officer on the asteroid Eros, originally a Bugger/Formic colony on which Command School is located.

Browne is credited with strong supporting and leading roles in several major films and has also been offered a starring role in a top-secret film that will begin shooting later this year.

He is thrilled to be a part of the Ender's Game team!

Edit: Edrick Browne's character name has been changed on IMDB to "Tech Officer Howell." Since these details can be changed by people uninvolved with the Ender's Game film, we're unsure as to which name is correct. Will keep you updated!

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New Roles in "Ender's Game" - Medical Personnel and Colonel Graff's Aide

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has once again been updated with some pretty interesting casting information:

Han Soto - Facebook

Han Soto, an actor who has over the past several years appeared as a minor character in many films and television series as well as done stunt work for the upcoming movie, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, has joined the Ender's Game cast and will appear alongside Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff's aide.

While no such character is specifically mentioned in the book, we can safely assume there are hundreds of Battle School staff members the readers are never introduced to, simply because many of them exist to Ender as nothing much more than background noise. As a Battle School administrator, Colonel Graff would most certainly have had an assistant.

Check out Han Soto's official site here or follow him on Twitter!

Wendy Miklovic and Joseph Uzzell

Two other characters have also been added to the cast: Wendy Miklovic and Joseph Uzzell are listed to be appearing in the Ender's Game movie as a doctor and a medic, respectively.

Miklovic, as well as working successfully as an actress, is also credited as a stunt performer in the box-office hit Green Lantern. According to IMDB, she also played the only female character in one of Universal Studios' Waterworld Spectacular shows.

Uzzell, too, has had other career pursuits besides acting: he spent many years as a street artist in the New Orleans French Quarter before moving northeast to join the corporate world. He is now back in NOLA and again working as an actor.

Whether these two characters are Battle School personnel or the doctors responsible for removing Ender's monitor at the beginning of the story is unclear at this time.

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Producer Alex Kurtzman on the "Ender's Game" Adaptation: It Captures the Book's "Essence"

An MTV.com reporter recently spoke with producer Alex Kurtzman regarding his upcoming movie, People Like Us, and Kurtzman (co-writer and executive producer of the Star Trek film as well as the recent hit television series Fringe) had a few things to say about Ender's Game and its adaptation from book to film:

 "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 said.

 "[Director] Gavin Hood, the minute that we read his script we realized that in a miraculous way he'd managed to distill down the essence of the book and the big moves to a very understandable clear format," the writer continued. "He had made changes that were I think totally protective of the novel, he hasn't changed any of the plot, it's just about not being able to put all of it in one movie. He really distills it down to its essence in a beautiful way and that was an amazing thing to see. It's an amazing thing to see the movie come to life because it's such a special and different movie."

Kurtzman also had nothing but praises for the cast:

"Asa [Butterfield] is unbelievable in it. Hailee [Steinfeld] and Abigail [Breslin] are incredible. Harrison [Ford] and Viola [Davis] are just, they're weirdly exactly what you imagined when you read the book, or at least I did," he admitted. "It's really going to be a special movie. We're about halfway through it, maybe close to halfway but it's been a wonderful shoot so far."

"We're just happy to support the vision of the book," he added. "It's such a treasured novel and it's very rare that you get an opportunity to work on something like that so we were very psyched." (MTV)

So? Does this ease your worries or are you still concerned about the movie being untrue to the novel?

Somehow, it seems as though Ender's Game fans should be less and less worried about whether or not the Battle School kids are wearing socks.

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Production Blog #3 - Ender’s Days - Space Camp!

Hey, guys! Post #3 from the official production blog takes us behind-the-scenes at Space Camp! Check out what Asa, Aramis, Moises and Suraj were up to in February, before filming had even started:

© 2012 Ender's Game Holdings LLC

 “Houston, we have a problem.  We don’t know how to land the Shuttle.” Good thing it’s just a simulator safely on the ground at SPACE CAMP in Huntsville, Alabama.  Aramis, Moises, Asa & Suraj (pictured above from a monitor in the MISSION CONTROL ROOM ) and the rest of our cast agreed that to do Ender’s Game right, they had to train as though they were really headed into ZERO G.  And this wasn’t just an afternoon spent taking a vanity tour. From the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), which simulates extra-vehicular shuttle ­missions in Earth’s orbit, to the microgravity training chair that prepared astronauts for moonwalks during the Apollo program, the week at Space Camp was genuine prep for the feeling of reality that this movie deserves. And after all, the army that trains together stays together.

It's exciting to know that the actors working on Ender's Game are taking Zero G seriously -- after an experience at Space Camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, they should be very well prepared, indeed.

You can read more about Space Camp here. :)

Happy Wednesday!

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About: Asa Butterfield - Happy 15th Birthday!

Name: Asa Butterfield (IMDB / Twitter)
Role: Ender Wiggin
Birthday: April 1, 1997

Asa Butterfield was born and raised in Islington, London where, when he's not away filming, he lives with his parents and younger sister, Loxie. He also has an older brother, Morgan, who is a drummer.

Butterfield caught the acting bug when he was 7 and started taking part in a local children's theater. He made his first television appearance in the movie After Thomas (2006) where he played a young autistic boy and a year later he was casted in Son of Rambow (2007), a coming-of-age story about two boys who set out to create an amateur film.

According to Wikipedia, he enjoys school, friends, piano, squash, reading, video games, and his cats.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 

Butterfield stepped into the limelight in 2008 when he appeared as "Bruno" in Mark Herman's World War II drama, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. After seeing his audition tape and meeting with him in person, Herman was so impressed with his natural, believable performance that he was instantly ready to cast him but decided to audition hundreds of other hopefuls before giving the role to Butterfield so that "no stone was left unturned."

as Bruno

When asked how much he knew about the Holocaust, Butterfield, like most kids his age, only had a vague idea. In order to allow the boy to keep the wide-eyed innocence he needed to bring across on screen as Bruno, the director chose not to tell him any more than he already knew. They also, contrary to common practice, opted to film the final scenes last in order to give Butterfield and the young boy playing Schmul, Jack Scanlon, time to prepare for the tragic ending of the film.

Merlin and More Movies

After appearing in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Butterfield secured a role in an episode of the BBC drama Merlin, where he played Mordred, a young Druid boy who is rumored to grow up to be the downfall of King Arthur. He appeared as Mordred in subsequent episodes in 2009 but Mordred was recently re-casted by an older actor, Alexander Vlahos, most likely because of conflicts with Butterfield's filming schedule.

as Mordred

Also in 2009, Butterfield was casted in and filmed the movie The Wolfman (2010), playing a younger version of Simon Merrells' character, Ben. Afterward he went on to appear alongside Emma Thompson and Dame Maggie Smith in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), a role for which he was positively reviewed.

Most recently, Asa Butterfield can be seen as the title character in Martin Scorsese's Hugo, starring alongside many notable actors such as Sir Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee and Jude Law. The film opened to extremely positive reviews and was nominated for 11 Oscars, the most of the evening. It won 5 of those awards, including Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction.

as Hugo

Ender's Game

In November of 2011, after much speculation surrounding his name and the role, Asa Butterfield was officially cast as Ender Wiggin in the upcoming Ender's Game movie. Filming began in New Orleans on February 24, 2012 and is set to finish on June 8th.

Fun Fact

At the age of 5, Asa Butterfield appeared on the cover of "Better than Working" by Patrick Skene Catling, an autobiography of a British man who started his career in the airforce and then went on to become a war journalist. You can view the cover here. :)

Happy Birthday, Asa!

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