While this has been a very turbulent summer for blockbusters, Ender’s Game, which is coming in November, is one of the most anticipated genre films in recent memory. Except there’s a potentially big controversy brewing because of homophobic comments made by the book’s author Orson Scott Card.
Ender’s Game, which was published in 1985, is one of the most popular sci-fi novels of the last thirty years, and it’s taken nearly just as long to bring it to the big screen. This is such an anticipated event in genre movies that even the press shy Harrison Ford, who stars along with Ben Kingsley, has eagerly been promoting the film, or as eagerly as he can muster.
Nevertheless, as E! Online tells us, Card’s open feelings against gay marriage are now a hot button topic in the wake of Paula Deen’s firing, and Alec Baldwin’s homophobic tweets. Card has come forward to say that his views on gay marriage is “moot,” that this story takes place over a century into the future and it “has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984.”
While many geeks will be out in force to support Ender’s Game, a group called Geeks OUT is trying to organize a boycott of the movie, posting the command of “Do NOT see this movie! Do not buy a ticket at the theater, do not purchase the DVD, do not watch it on-demand. Ignore all merchandise and toys. However much you may have admired his books, keep your money out of Orson Scott Card’s pockets.”
These days, there are plenty of gay geeks making their presence known everywhere, and under normal circumstances they’d probably be on line opening day for a big geek event like Ender’s, but now it’s turning into a big line in the sand. Considering Card is clearly not going to back down from his stance, expect more controversy to come before Ender’s Game is released on November 1.
