It’s never easy finding child actors who can pull off serious dramatic performances, which is why there only seem to be a handful out there who end up landing all the good roles in Hollywood. For a while it was Kodi Smit-McPhee (Romulus, My Father, The Road, Let Me In) who was being recruited for everything, but now it seems he has some competition in the form of Asa Butterfield, the 14-year-old star of Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film Hugo. According to Deadline, Butterfield has just landed the lead role in Ender’s Game, the upcoming adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s epic sci-fi novel. He will play the protagonist Ender Wiggin, who is taken from his family at a young age and trained to fight against an alien species known as the “Buggers”.

Although we’ll have to wait until next weekend to see Hugo, Butterfield also previously starred in the acclaimed WWII film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in 2008 and had a supporting role in The Wolfman. His performance in Ender’s Game will be a pivotal one, and it has been one of the main question marks surrounding the feasibility of turning it into a movie. Of course, almost the entire cast is made up of kids, so they will need to find some other solid young actors for him to play off of as well.

Ender’s Game is being directed by Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) from a script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek). It will be released by Summit Entertainment on March 15th, 2013. Are you looking forward to seeing Ender’s Game on the big screen?

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