Viola Davis Cast in Ender's Game and Beautiful Creatures
Posted 02.03.12 by Ryan
Viola Davis (Doubt) has had a pretty good 2012 so far, receiving a SAG Award over the weekend for her role in The Help, which has also earned the actress an Academy Award nomination. Now, she can add two more movies to her resume.
Variety reports that Davis has lined up two projects for 2012: Summit Entertainment's adaptation of Ender's Game and Warner Bros.' adaptation of Beautiful Creatures. Both projects will shoot later this year.
Based on the 1985 novel by Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game is set in a future where humanity has been decimated by an insectoid race of aliens. The government enlists gifted children to help with the fight, including the brilliant and bullied Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield, Hugo, Son of Rambow). Davis will play a military psychologist who looks after the emotional welfare of young trainees and designs the games that test their skills.
Davis joins a cast that includes Ben Kingsley (Hugo, Ghandi) as Mazer Rackham, Ender's mentor, Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as Petra Arkanian, Ender's closest ally, and Harrison Ford as Colonel Hyrum Graff, Commander of Training for the International Fleet. Production on Ender's Game will reportedly start this month in New Orleans for a March 15, 2013, release date. Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) will direct from his own script.
After Ender's Game, Davis will move on to Beautiful Creatures, adapted by writer-director Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You) from the first of three novels by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The Caster Chronicles open with Lena Duchannes, who is trying to hide a curse that has haunted her family for generations. Fellow Gatlin resident Ethan Wate meets Lena when she moves into the town's oldest plantation; the two soon realize they're inextricably linked.
Warners and Alcon Entertainment have been developing the adaptation since 2009, in hopes that they have found the next Twilight Saga. The next two books in the series, Beautiful Darkness and Beautiful Chaos have also been optioned for movies. And there's no shortage of interest — see how many fans have already weighed in with their choices in our nearly year-old Cast-O-Rama.
Producer Erwin Stoff (I Am Legend, The Matrix) had this to say about Beautiful Creatures.
This story successfully uses the bucolic, peaceful world of the Gothic South and the stories of families that have been rooted there for generations to tell a story of fated love. Our intention is to create characters that are so rich, and a world that is so inviting, that audiences will desire to have the story continue beyond this movie.
EW reports that Davis has been cast as Amma, described as "a seer who looks after Ethan and his father after Ethan's mother's death."
Production on Beautiful Creatures will start in New Orleans this April, which means that Davis won't have to travel far to start working on her next project.