It can be little coincidence that in the week Ender’s Game arrives in US cinemas, following much controversy and calls for a boycott over author Orson Scott Card anti-gay views, that a story has emerged saying that he will make no money from the film. Many of the boycott calls have focussed on the idea that the deal Card signed for Ender’s Game to be made into a movie would include some sort of cash for him based on the film’s box office performance.
However TheWrap says Card’s deal, signed almost a decade ago, included no part of the back-end, although it did promise him a producer credit. He had no creative input either. It should be noted though, that even though his pay won’t increase with the film’s box office , it’s almost certain he got paid handsomely when the film went into production. Most deals for book adaptations pay a relatively small amount for an option (essentially a guarantee that producers can hold the rights to a book for a certain amount of time while they try to develop a movie version). Then there will be more money paid at key points in the process, with the biggest cash reserved for when the movie gets the greenlight and goes into production.
Therefore the closer the movie got to the screen, the more money he got paid. So while buying a ticket at this point may not help his bank balance, the fact there’s a film at all, rather than just the idea of one, has. It’s also true that he still makes money from every copy of the book sold, and the film certainly acts as a giant advert for that.
While Card has deliberately been left out of all promotion of the movie, that doesn’t mean he’s just going to sit in a corner and shut up. In a new interview, he’s got up on his high horse and is utterly dismissive of all criticism. He told Deseret News, ‘I’ve had no criticism. I’ve had savage, lying, deceptive personal attacks, but no actual criticism because they’ve never addressed any of my actual ideas. Character assassination seems to be the only political method that is in use today, and I don’t play that game, and you can’t defend against it.
‘All you can do is try to offer ideas, and for those who want to listen to ideas, great. For those who simply want to punish you for not falling in line with their dogmas, there’s really not much you can do about it. [The criticism] won’t affect my work. Will it affect the reception of my work? Of course, but not in ways that they expect. My sales go up with such attacks.’
Delightful, isn’t he? And it’s interesting that in denying he’s been criticised but has unfairly had his character assassinated, he decides to assassinate the character of everyone who disagrees with him rather than criticising them.
Where do you stand on the Ender’s Game boycott?
I don’t think a boycott is really the right idea. yeah, he’s a terrible person, but the message of the books, and (unless they just shredded it like Hollywood tends to do with adaptations) the message of the movie is one of acceptance, rather than what Card personally believes