Next Futurama DVD has a title - VIDEO
The next Futurama direct-to-DVD movie has a title. According to an interview with Futurama producer David X. Cohen, the subtitle of the movie will be Bender’s Game. It’s a pun on the classic sci-fi novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.
A preview of the video is on the latest release, The Beast With a Billion Backs, and involves the Planet Express crew caught in a Lord of the Rings-type alternate universe. It’s the Futurama team’s first foray into fantasy.
Cohen did state that the title has very little to do with the subject matter of the DVD. “We were all kind of shocked when we started talking about the idea, that we hadn’t done it before, really,” Cohen said. “It almost seems obvious that it’s something our fans would like.”
Bender’s Game is going to be released later this year. Having already enjoyed the first two direct-to-DVD releases since Futurama’s resurrection, I am looking forward to this one.
Wolfgang Petersen Off Ender’s Game
io9 reports that the production, which is now hoping to shoot by early 2009, is on the hunt for a new director. Endger’s Game was originally slated to be released this year. Orson Scott Card is still working hard to tighten the screenplay, while producers narrow down their potential directors short list. The adaptation requires an extended pre-production due to the many visual effects involved, so the earlier the better.
Here is the plot description from the book jacket: 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.