Producers discussing veteran actors for adult lead.
Now that the Gavin Hood-directed ‘Ender’s Game’ adaptation has found its lead in young star Asa Butterfield (‘Hugo,’ ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’), producers have turned their focus to casting the adult lead of Colonel Hyrum Graff.
Variety is reporting that producers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Gigi Pritzker and Linda McDonough have their eyes on a group of veteran actors that includes Harrison Ford. The trade adds that ‘Lord of the Rings’ actor Viggo Mortensen was originally being eyed for the role but the talks didn’t work out.
Based on Orson Scott Card’s award-winning 1985 sci-fi novel, the futuristic tale follows Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggins, a gifted young gamer with an almost preternatural capacity for strategy and logistics who is recruited by the government to help battle an insect-like alien race known as The Formics.