Not long after The Twilight Saga concluded, Summit Entertainment geared up for its next
young adult franchise: Ender's Game.
Based on the Orson Scott Card novel of the same name, Ender's Game was envisioned as
the first in a series of new sci-fi films—after all, there's a ton of written material to
draw from—but the series got canned long before its completion.
Here's why we never got to see an Ender's Game sequel.
Box office bomb
Hollywood is a business—people tend to forget that sometimes.
Studio executives would love to make whatever movies they want, but they have to make sure
they'll make their money back … and then some.
So when Ender's Game grossed a mere $125.5 million worldwide against a production budget
of $110 million, that showed Lionsgate that audiences weren't willing to put up with an
Ender's Game franchise.
Variety called it one of the biggest box office bombs of the year.
With that kind of response, few studios would be willing to jump onto a sequel.
Boycott
There are countless reasons why a movie would flop at the box office, but for this particular
film, an argument can be made that Orson Scott Card's views on homosexuality and the legalization
of same-sex marriage led a number of people, especially those who were on the fence about
seeing Ender's Game, to boycott the movie altogether.
It's impossible to say how much of an impact the boycott had on the movie's box office
take, but there's no denying that in a politically charged climate, any negative press against
a film like Ender's Game couldn't have helped.
Budget constraints
Budget constraints are an ordinary occurrence in Hollywood, but it's almost never a good
thing when it happens.
For instance, Twentieth Century Fox kept the budget low for James Mangold's Logan because
the director and Hugh Jackman wanted the film to be rated R. While that ended up working
in their favor, a studio usually constrains a movie's budget if it doesn't seem like the
film will be as successful as initially hoped.
That rings true for the would-be Ender's Game sequel.
The first movie had a production budget of $110 million, a fairly typical amount for
a sci-fi flick, but the sequel might have seen that number dip below the $100 million
mark.
Director Gavin Hood originally wanted to film the first and second movies back to back,
but Lionsgate wasn't up for that much of a gamble.
Hood said: "It's a pity on many levels because that cast was all there, the sets were all
there, we should've shot the two movies back-to-back."
A tired trend
Before superhero movies fully took over Hollywood, each studio was attempting to launch its own
young adult franchise to snag some of the success of Twilight, The Hunger Games, and
Harry Potter.
Some were successful, but most weren't, and at this point, young adult adaptations are
a tired trend that audiences no longer seem interested in paying for.
Beautiful Creatures flopped, as did The Mortal Instruments, and even initially successful
YA franchises like the Divergent series suffered insanely diminishing returns.
Young adult adaptations can be successful if budgets are kept low and if the movies
are marketed properly.
Unfortunately, every studio wants to believe they're sitting on a gold mine, so they go
full-steam ahead with the first installment, which, in the case of Ender's Game, leaves
little room for expansion in the sequel.
Aged out
As Gavin Hood explained to Hypable, the proposed film sequel to Ender's Game would have been
been based on Ender's Shadow, which takes place concurrently with the first book.
So if the studio really wanted to adapt that story, it would have made more sense to film
back-to-back, as Gavin Hood originally wanted to do.
Several years have passed, and now Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld are far older than their
pre-teen characters in the books.
Butterfield has starred in several other young adult-oriented movies, such as Miss Peregrine's
Home for Peculiar Children and The Space Between Us, while Steinfeld is branching out in movies
like the Pitch Perfect series and The Edge of Seventeen.
It makes no sense to continue the series at this stage.
Then there are the bigger actors like Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, and Viola Davis.
With Ford returning to his iconic characters in recent years, he would be a difficult person
to nail down for the young adult sequel.
To get all these people together again would likely require more money than Lionsgate would
be willing to cough up.
TV spinoff
Even if Lionsgate and the cast were to consider a sequel, could the studio afford it?
Hood made no secret about having difficulties obtaining enough money for Ender's Game.
If he was having trouble getting $110 million in 2013, he's not going to be able to get
enough money now.
And remember, there are several novels continuing Ender's story, and even more in the Shadow
and Formic Wars series.
With so much material, the franchise could work better as a television series instead
of a feature-film franchise.
Hey, it worked out pretty well for Game of Thrones.
In fact, shortly after the movie released in theaters, Variety reported that the studio
was considering a TV series spinoff instead of a sequel.
Since there were issues getting the necessary money for the first movie and it didn't do
so well at the box office, it makes sense for the studio to look at other options.
Unfortunately, there haven't been any updates on the TV front since that report in 2013,
so who knows if it'll ever happen.
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