Gavin Hood: ‘Speaker for the Dead’ May Not Be the Sequel

caltech 048Possible Film Trilogy

‘Ender’s Game’ movie producers and director, Gavin Hood, have been tight-lipped about movie sequels. When we interviewed Hood at Comic-Con a few months ago, he told us that there were no contracts or money currently in place for a sequel. Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate have made it clear to investors that if the ‘Ender’s Game’ film performs well at box offices, it may be the catalyst to a new young adult film franchise and an anonymous source recently revealed to us that the studios are hoping to turn ‘Ender’s Game’ into a trilogy.

Until now, Gavin Hood has been leery when speaking about the direction possible sequels might take. The Enderverse timeline is complicated, to say the least. Now, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times Hero Complex, Gavin Hood discusses the possibility of creating a ‘Speaker for the Dead’ movie. He says,

“It’s a great question, but I think it’s such a difficult one to answer, because 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. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t think we can count our sequels before they hatch. We’ve got a complicated film here. I hope that it does two things. I hope that it gives the audiences the visual excitement that they want from a big movie, but it does have the challenge of asking questions that films of this kind don’t usually ask. And we’ll have to see whether audiences embrace that. Most big popcorn movies are bad guy does something to good guy, good guy gets revenge on bad guy, sets the world right and moves on. And ‘Ender’s Game’ is just not that simple, so it’s an exciting challenge. It’s a little terrifying, and let’s see how audiences respond. I hope they respond well so we can keep doing films that are not just goodies versus baddies.”

Read the Gavin Hood’s full interview at The Hero Complex, and learn more about ‘Fleet School’ here.

The ‘Ender’s Game’ film was released in U.S. theaters on November 1, 2013.