Fresco Pictures, in association with Chartoff Productions and Warner Brothers Studios, has announced that it will bring "Ender's Game," an award winning novel by LDS author Orson Scott Card, to the silver screen.

According to the Fresco Pictures website, the director of the film will be Wolfgang Peterson, the director of "The Perfect Storm" and "Air Force One."

"Ender's Game" is the story of a young genius named Andrew (Ender) Wiggin who is called upon and trained in a special battle school to save the world from an alien invasion.

According to the Fresco Pictures website, "Ender's Game", published in 1985, has won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best science fiction novel and has been translated into several languages such as French, German, Japanese and Spanish.

"Ender's Game" has also spawned other novels by Orson Scott Card including "Ender's Shadow" which tells the same story as "Ender's Game" but from a different character's perspective.

Fresco Pictures said that the movie will be a combination of the two books.

"The movie can't show everything from either book," said Orson Scott Card on the Fresco Pictures Web site, "so there will certainly be scenes and even plot threads that you cared about which are not present in the film"

"The most important thing for the film, though, is that it be a marvelous movie in its own right, whether you've read the books or not. And I can promise you...fans of the books will be very, very happy with it and so will those who go see the movie without having read or even heard of the books."

Fresco Pictures said that casting and hiring for the film has not begun yet and will not begin until Wolfgang Peterson finishes his next film. The film should be released between two and four years.

In addition to playing an important part in the production of the film, Orson Scott Card will also be writing the screenplay, said Fresco Pictures.

"The longer it takes, the better it's going to be," Fresco Pictures said.

Melissa Lastly, 20, a junior in history from Payson, has read "Ender's Game" and said she thinks the movie will be very interesting.

"I thought it was a great book, very intriguing," Lastly said. " I think it would be exciting to watch, just to see how well they portray the book to the movie."

Fresco Pictures is a Los Angeles based film company formed in part by Orson Scott Card, according to its Web site.

Copyright Brigham Young University 29 Jul 2002