Backlog: Ender's Game as a movie

I've been reading the Ender's Game saga lately (not the Shadow books, and I haven't read Children of the Mind yet) and while I was reading through Xenocide I recalled that I had read about people trying to turn the first book into a movie (Maybe I will be tongue lashed for saying this, but I actually liked Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide much better than the original). I checked into it, and there is work being done on the movie, with Card writing the screenplay.

What do you think of the books in general? Which is your favorite? What do you think about turning the book(s) into a movie?

I'll give my answer to the last question now.

After reading Ender's Game, I think it would be nearly impossible to turn it into a good movie, particularly a live action movie, that remained true to the spirit and the general form of the book. Why? Several reasons.

Number one is a doozie, and it's always the thing that Hollywood considers first: marketability. If you make the movie as close to the book as possible, you lose almost all of your audience, besides the people who have actually read the book. Think about it. The book takes place over many years in the battle station, much of the action occurs in two odd computer games and Valentine and Peter have their whole Locke/Demosthenes thing going on. These things are not easily translated into film, and many would find them slow. In fact, Card has stated in an interview that the Valentine/Peter subplot is being removed.

The film is also unmarketable in the sense that those who have not read the book will not want to go see a movie starring exclusively children, while most children will not go see a movie that is rated R for nudity, disturbing images and gore. Which, if the book is brought directly as it is to the screen, is what the rating will be.

The second reason that it would be hard to make into a good movie is CGI. For this movie to even appear believable in live action form, you would need an obscene amount of money to get the scenes in the battle room to look just right. Yeah, I know that people do amazing things with CGI nowadays, but even I admit that some scenes in the Star Wars prequels still look mildly fake (well, really only one scene--the battle on Mustafar). And those actors were standing up. Floating people about in bulky suits in front of a green screen while maintaining realism will be a daunting task.

The third reason that this movie will be so hard to make well is the child actors. I can see finding one or two or three child actors that will work in their roles in one movie, but this movie requires several more than that. It is so incredibly hard to find really good child actors, and this movie absolutely won't work without them.