Ender's Game Filmmakers Have "Opposite View" on Gay Marriage as Author Orson Scott Card

But "we have no right to tell him what he should or shouldn't say," Gavin Hood, who directed the adaptation of Card's sci-fi classic, tells Huffington Post

By Natalie Finn Jul 19, 2013 2:30 AMTags
Ender's Game, Hailee Steinfeld, Asa ButterfieldSummit Entertainment

Orson Scott Card doesn't speak for everyone playing Ender's Game this summer.

Gavin Hood, who directed the upcoming big-screen adapatation of Card's classic 1985 sci-fi novel, says that he and producer Bob Orci "hold the opposite view" as the author when it comes to the legalization of gay marriage.

As in, they're all for it, unlike Card, who is famously against it.

"But we can't control—like, we have no right to tell him what he should or shouldn't say," Hood told Huffington Post

"I do not agree with Orson Scott Card's position on gay marriage. But, I love Ender's Game the book. And that's something that one has to reconcile in one's own head. That's really our position."

Card's stance—which he recently referred to as "moot" given the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act—has prompted calls for a boycott of the film, which is due in theaters Nov. 1.

With Hood at Comic-Con, Orci also told HuffPo that at least the controversy has allowed for a dialogue about human rights, equality and other issues that happen to be central to the film, about a post-apocalyptic society in which an elite military force is preparing to battle aliens.

"We've come to embrace the fact that this actually gets to be a conversation," Orci said. "And we actually get to sit here and say that we support human rights and we support what's going on in this country right now and that it's trending in the right direction. And without this conversation, we wouldn't be able to say that. We wouldn't be talking about that. And the book is about tolerance and understanding differences and bullying. And, so, it's actually turned out to be oddly relevant to the book and it turns out that the book itself is the biggest advocate of the position."

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Added Hood: "And that's the beautiful thing. Frequently artists create something that is better and more insightful than their own particular point of view on some issue. We have a great piece of art and we have the artist behind that art saying things that seem to be extremely bigoted. But they're not the book. The book is the book and Orson's views are his views."

In 2009, having joined the National Organization of Marriage, which strictly opposes legalizing same-sex unions, Ender wrote in the Mormon Times, "Marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down."

Hasn't happened yet.

In the upcoming film, Asa Butterfield plays Ender, the gifted young lad recruited to help train for the coming interplanetary fight at an elite military academy. Harrison Ford, Abigail Breslin, Hailee Steinfeld, Ben Kingsley and Viola Davis also star.