Orson Scott Card‘s classic 1985 sci-fi adventure novel Ender’s Game has been targeted for the celluloid treatment for several years, at one point with Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot) in the director’s chair. Last year, Summit Entertainment finally got an Ender’s movie into production with Gavin Hood (Tsotsi) directing and writing the screenplay adaptation.

The project has attracted a cast of acting heavyweights and up-and-coming young stars with 15-year-old British actor Asa Butterfield (Hugo) in the title role of a brilliant child who joins a program designed to produce military officers out of bright children for a war Earth is waging with an alien known as the Formics, or “buggers.” Joining Butterfield are Abigail Breslin (Zombieland), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast), recent Oscar nominee Viola Davis (The Help), and Harrison Ford – no stranger to fighting in interstellar wars on screen.

Marking the exit of Iron Man and Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau and the entrance of new director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), it’s been wondered how much—if at all—things would be shaken up for trilogy-maker Iron Man 3.

We won’t really known the answer to this question until we start seeing goodies from the movie released, but today comes word of a potential villain for the film.

It’s being reported that the great Ben Kingsley has entered into negotiations to join the cast, and that if everything goes smoothly he would be playing the movie’s villain after Jeff Bridges’ and Mickey Rourke/Sam Rockwell’s turns in the first two installments.

Another young actor has been added to the cast of Ender’s Game, the adaptation of the Orson Scott Card science fiction novel.

Brendan Meyer, star of the Disney XD TV series Mr. Young, has been chosen for the role of Stilson, a classmate of Ender (played by Hugo star Asa Butterfield) who bullies and taunts him while they are at Ground School.

Okay, things are officially getting interesting in the world of Ender’s Game.

THR is reporting that Ben Kingsley has joined the film’s cast, and will star opposite his Hugo counterpart Asa Butterfield, as a “legendary war hero presumed to be long dead.” Gavin Hood will direct from a script that he also wrote. Hailee Steinfeld is also connected to the project.

Hugo
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee, Ray Winstone, Helen McCrory, Emily Mortimer, Jude Law
Release Date: November 23, 2011
 
Martin Scorsese encounters no intense turmoil as he thwarts his inner urge to make another violent picture and involves himself with a luminously adventurous 3D film that has a little orphan boy at its center, as well as an immense homage to cinema. In one of the most inventive films of the year, Scorsese’s Hugo is an indelible delight that is meant to enchant audiences of every age. The way he uses this immersive 3D technology is enchantingly beautiful, bringing a distant world and all of its once unexplored recesses into our immediate presence.

Even those ardent followers of Scorsese’s genius will find visible evidence of his personal life and his previous films, all in which reverberate throughout Hugo. But what has to be realized is that this film could have only been brought to life by a man who harbors an infinite understanding of and an appreciation for the realm of cinema.