The big-screen version of Orson Scott Card's classic sci-fi novel Ender's Game is one step closer to realization. According to Deadline, director Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) has offered the lead role to Asa Butterfield, star of Martin Scorcese's Hugo, which premieres Nov. 23.

If he accepts, Butterfield will play Andrew "Ender" Wiggins, the boy genius who gets high marks in a school designed to create and train the next line of commanders in the war against aliens. Card originally wrote about the world in a 1977 short story published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact. By 1985 he had penned an award-winning novel that turned into a series of 11 books, with two more on the way (as well as a pair of comic book miniseries).

The Summit Entertainment film is being produced by genre giants Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers) along with Card and several others.