Ender's Game Stars Travel Back to the 80's for Ten Thousand Saints movie

Asa Butterfield as Ender and Hailee Steinfeld as Petra Arkanian in Ender's Game

Ten Thousand Saints author Eleanor Henderson has announced via twitter that filming is set to start sometime in January on the screen adaptation of her best-selling novel. It feels like things are happening very quickly!

Back in December I learned from Deadline - and posted here - that Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit, Romeo and Juliet, Ender's Game) was pretty much a done deal to star as Eliza in the film set in NYC's punk rock world of the 1980's. 

If filming is starting this month, it definitely means the lead role of Jude has been cast! I've been wondering who would play the sixteen year old Jude Keffy-Horn who "was good at sharing new and forgotten methods of getting high," so I reached out to Eleanor Henderson via twitter and she tweeted me back! 

@simcarter Thanks so much! I can now answer your question: Asa Butterfield will play Jude and I'm just as thrilled by this choice.
— Eleanor Henderson (@eleanorofithaca) January 5, 2014

With things happening so quickly it may mean I'll be adding Ten Thousand Saints to the Movies Based on Books 2014 list, rather than 2015, when it's currently slated to come out! I'll keep you posted when I hear something.

Pretty nifty to see the young stars of the futuristic Ender's Game travel back in time to the late 80's and get grungy. Both Butterfield and Steinfeld exude a sweetness and vulnerability, a certain innocence that goes with youth of course, but is hard to hold onto in the hyper-sophisticated worlds young actors travel in. From what I've read of Ten Thousand Saints so far, those qualities will only enhance their parts. I've just started reading the book - a Christmas gift from my son along with John Green's An Abundance of Katherines and Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture - and am hooked already. If you're not familiar with the storyline, check out the B&N blurb below. I'm looking forward to seeing the pair tackle the edgier, meatier characters than the sci-fi action genre film allowed. 

Thanks to Ms. Henderson for allowing me to share the news! Follow Eleanor Henderson on twitter @eleanorofithaca 

"Adopted by a pair of diehard hippies, restless, marginal Jude Keffy-Horn spends much of his youth getting high with his best friend, Teddy, in their bucolic and deeply numbing Vermont town. But when Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude's relationship with drugs and with his parents devolves to new extremes. Sent to live with his pot-dealing father in New York City's East Village, Jude stumbles upon straight edge, an underground youth culture powered by the paradoxical aggression of hardcore punk and a righteous intolerance for drugs, meat, and sex. With Teddy's half brother, Johnny, and their new friend, Eliza, Jude tries to honor Teddy's memory through his militantly clean lifestyle. But his addiction to straight edge has its own dangerous consequences. While these teenagers battle to discover themselves, their parents struggle with this new generation's radical reinterpretation of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll and their grown-up awareness of nature and nurture, brotherhood and loss."