With both young adult lit adaptations and the science fiction genre each being hot at the box office over the last several years, and Orson Scott Card‘s 1985 novel Ender’s Game existing as it does it at the interstice of the two, its adaptation would seem to be an easy and especially ripe fit for these times. But what took so long for the film version? There were many hurdles over the years, and a variety of scripts and attached talent that never quite fully came together. Mostly, though, Ender’s Game is complicated, in the best sense of the word.

The book’s complex themes (it’s included on the U.S. Marine Corps’ professional reading program list), as well as its unique reflection upon some of the betrayals adults visit upon children in the name of protecting them — all rendered without giving into dystopian bleakness — make it a tough needle to thread as a film adaptation. Talking to the producers of Ender’s Game (of which there are more than a dozen), director Gavin Hood and even co-star Harrison Ford, though, there’s a shared affinity for the source material’s challenging nature. For the full read, from the News & Record, click here.