So far the film adaptation of the Orson Scott Card novel Ender’s Game has not exactly been a huge commercial success. It grossed under $28 million domestically in its opening weekend which, while enough to put it at the top of the charts, is still only a fraction of its $110 million budget. It’s certainly not a given, then, that the movie will get a sequel, but this is the Internet, so let’s talk about one anyway.
Card himself has announced a new series of YA books that will serve as sequels to Ender’s Game, only without Ender. He says the following of the first book, Fleet Academy (which, unfortunately, will not be a sci-fi take on Police Academy):
It’s what happens to Battle School after the International Fleet loses its purpose of war. It becomes what is called “Fleet School” and it prepares kids to be commanders, explorers, in the colonies that are going to be forming.
You can see Card’s announcement in its entirety in the video below, which comes courtesy of Southern Virginia University, the college at which Card teaches:
Oh by the way, Card is still a card-carrying (see what I did there?) homophobe, in case you were wondering. But politics aside, you may be asking yourself, “Why would I read another Ender’s Game sequel when I’ve already read Speaker for the Dead, which was published way back in 1986? Well, Ender’s Game director Gavin Hood has an answer for you:
The sequel “Speaker for the Dead” takes place 30 years after, so we’re in an interesting place. I think we have to hope that audiences respond to the film… And Orson is apparently writing something that’s more of a direct follow called [“Fleet School”]. Obviously, from the studio’s point of view, they’d almost certainly want to move the characters from this film into the next journey. So it may be that “Speaker for the Dead” is not the sequel now.
So there you go. Fleet School is a more direct sequel to Ender’s Game, albeit one that doesn’t involve Ender, and it is the most likely candidate to to be a sequel to the movie, even though the movie isn’t doing so well. Card supposedly won’t see any of the profits off the Ender’s Game film if it ever sees any, but that doesn’t mean the same would be true of a sequel. So then we’d get to have the whole “Should we support an unapologetic bigot?” argument all over again.
Fingers crossed!
