ENDER'S GAME Casting Call Taking Place Today in New Orleans

Ender’s Game, the upcoming adaptation of the popular science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, will be looking for new actors and actresses at an open casting call being held at the Hilton Garden Inn located in the Warehouse District of New Orleans on Saturday January 14th from 10am to 2pm.

Ender's Game, based on Orson Scott Card's Hugo Award winning, science fiction young adult novel, is slated for theatrical release on March 15th, 2013. Asa Butterfield, the star of director Martin Scorsese's widely praised 3D film Hugo will be playing the lead role of Ender Wiggin. Harrison Ford (Cowboys & Aliens) will be Colonel Hyrum Graff, the adult lead in the film and commander of training for the International Fleet military academy in located in space. Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) will play Petra Arkanian, one of Ender's Battle School trainers and eventual confidant. Sir Ben Kingsley, who recently starred with Butterfield in Hugo will play a character who is crucial to Ender's battle training, former Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham. Canadian actor Brendan Meyer will play one of Ender's early antagonists Stilson who he encounters before being shipped off to Battle School. Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin will play Valentine Wiggin, sister to Butterfield's Ender. Aramis Knight (Rendition) will play Ender's youngest recruit Bean, Moises Arias will play Salamander Army Commander Bonzo Madrid, Jimmy "Jax" Pinchak (Let Me In) will be Peter Wiggin, Suraj Parthasarathy will be Alai, Conor Carroll will be Ender's first Battle School nemesis Bernard and Khylin Rhambo has signed on to play Dink Meeker.

Summit Entertainment is co-financing the film which Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolderine) will direct and screenwriting/producing duo Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Cowboys and Aliens) are attached as producers through their K/O Paper Products banner, along with Odd Lot Entertainment's Gigi Pritzker and Linda McDonough, author Orson Scott Card and Lynn Hendee.

A last minute casting call for the film has been put out by the New Orleans Film Office; here are the details:

Alexis Allen, along with Batherson Casting, are seeking bright and talented kids and teens ages 10-17 of varying ethnic background for the feature film production of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game”; based on one of the most famous science fiction novels of the last 40 years.

To be considered, please come to the open call this weekend, located at the address below between 10am and 2pm. Please also bring a recent snapshot of yourself. Homeschooled students are especially encouraged, because of the work during school hours.

Hilton Garden Inn
1001 South Peters St
New Orleans 70130

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.