One of them turned into a problem this week.
A planned boycott aimed at this science-fiction film, which is to be released on Nov. 1, gained momentum just as Summit Entertainment and its partners were getting ready to introduce “Ender’s Game,” with two of its stars, Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield, at the Comic-Con International fan convention in San Diego next Thursday. At issue is the author of the novel on which the film is based, Orson Scott Card; his views on homosexuality; and his public stance against same-sex marriage.
A book with a futuristic battle story published in 1985, “Ender’s Game” has nothing to do with gay marriage. Indeed, Glaad, a gay-rights organization that tracks media, reviewed the script and found nothing to criticize.
As for Mr. Card’s background and views, they were hardly a secret. A Mormon and a descendant of Brigham Young, he was on the board of the National Organization for Marriage, which has opposed same-sex unions, from 2009 until this year. In March a DC Comics project with Mr. Card as a co-writer fell apart when its illustrator, Chris Sprouse, quit as an online petition called for Mr. Card’s removal.
By Monday evening, Mr. Card was issuing a public plea for tolerance of his views — “with the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot,” he noted in a statement to the Entertainment Weekly Web site — in response to a planned boycott that had burst into prominence only the day before, when The Huffington Post published an article about a Web site called Skipendersgame.com.
Speaking by telephone on Wednesday, Patrick Yacco and Jono Jarrett, who helped start the Web boycott campaign in conjunction with Geeks Out, an organization that promotes gay-themed pop culture, said they were stunned by the sudden attention to their effort, which had been online since April. “We were really surprised by how this has turned out,” Mr. Yacco said.
He added that their bare-bones boycott site had gathered about 2,000 pledges of support from Sunday to Friday. That many boycotters would barely dent the audience of millions that typically shows up for the opening weekend of a heavily marketed science-fiction blockbuster.
Web-savvy individuals and bootstrap organizations for years have been using Internet sites and social media to call for boycotts of movies that somehow offend them. After its release last month, “World War Z,” about zombies, drew a boycott call for supposedly being too favorable to Israel. Perhaps less seriously, “Iron Man 3” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” were targeted for having been released abroad before they were seen in the United States.
Mr. Jarrett attributed the widespread interest in the “Ender’s Game” boycott campaign, which by now has been featured by CNN, NPR and The Christian Science Monitor, among others, to the simplicity of its appeal for a public shunning of Mr. Card.
“It’s very, very clear what he said and what he stands for,” Mr. Jarrett said.
An assistant to Mr. Card said he was abroad and not available for an interview.
Mr. Card has been a force in the science-fiction world since the publication of “Ender’s Game,” which was based on a story he wrote in the 1970s. It eventually spawned a series of books, which began with the recruitment and training of a boy, Andrew Wiggin, known as Ender, as an interplanetary fighter.
Though Hollywood pursued rights to “Ender’s Game” for years, Mr. Card was protective of the property, and at one time intended to write his own screenplay. Eventually he optioned the books to Warner Brothers, which tried to turn them into a film for the director Wolfgang Petersen (“Das Boot,” “Troy”), before giving up. That cleared the way for the current production, which is partly financed by OddLot Entertainment and its owner, the heiress Gigi Pritzker. (The new movie is written and directed by Gavin Hood, who directed “X Men Origins: Wolverine,” and counts Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, both heavily credited fantasy filmmakers, among its key producers.)
Some of the views to which Mr. Jarrett and others object have been posted by Glaad as part of a Web-based “accountability project.” It cites published articles in which Mr. Card argued against the acceptance of homosexuality by Mormons, for instance, and contended that gay behavior often begins with sexual abuse.
Still, not every advocate of gay equality and same-sex marriage is convinced that turning away from “Ender’s Game,” which cost about $110 million to make, is the best way to counter Mr. Card.
“No way am I boycotting,” said Dustin Lance Black, who in 2009 won an Oscar for writing “Milk,” about the gay activist Harvey Milk, and who campaigned against California’s Proposition 8, which sought to ban gay marriage.
Speaking from London on Wednesday, Mr. Black — who, like Mr. Card, comes from a Mormon family — said he would rather engage with, than shut out, political and cultural adversaries. “We haven’t been getting the numbers we’ve seen by disengaging,” Mr. Black said, referring to a rise in public acceptance of same-sex marriage and other measures of gay equality.
Summit executives declined to be interviewed about the boycott call or Mr. Card’s involvement in the movie.
In a statement, Lionsgate, Summit’s corporate parent, noted that it has released movies with gay themes, including “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” and has long recognized same-sex unions and domestic partnerships in its own corporate benefits programs. It said the company does not agree with Mr. Card’s personal views or those of the National Organization for Marriage.
“The simple fact is that neither the underlying book nor the film itself reflect these views in any way, shape or form,” the statement said. It also said Lionsgate expects to host a benefit premiere for some gay-related cause in connection with “Ender’s Game.”
Mr. Jarrett and Mr. Yacco said they were only beginning to solicit support from larger groups that might lend teeth to their boycott plans. Mr. Yacco said that he would attend the Comic-Con convention but that he had not yet decided whether or how he might extend the Skip Ender’s Game campaign there.
A twist in the debate may be coming in October, when Open Court, a Chicago-based publisher, plans to release “Ender’s Game and Philosophy: Genocide Is Child’s Play,” a book of essays. In an entry titled “How Queer Is Ender,” two writers, Nicolas Michaud and Jessica Watkins, conclude that the novel and its world “aren’t so much homophobic as they are sexist.”
“Ender’s Game” and other books in the series, the authors argue, actually express “the yearning and suffering of a deep unrequited love between men, which can never really be eased by the inferior love of women.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/business/media/authors-anti-gay-views-fuel-call-for-boycott-of-enders-game.html?partner=rss&emc=rss