In the wake of True Grit, Hailee Steinfeld was immediately hurried off to the teen star proving grounds, where she and her fellow idiosyncratic indie breakout Jennifer Lawrence were pitted against each other for the lead in The Hunger Games while the Fanning sisters watched from above, icily eating pomegranates. Steinfeld eventually lost that round, but now she’s attached to another mega-franchise that centers around young people playing deadly games: Variety reports she’s currently in talks to join Gavin Hood’s adaptation of Ender’s Game in the role of Petra, one of the few female students in the elite military academy, and a friend and ally to Ender himself, who will be played by Asa Butterfield (as soon he returns those milk pails he stole from Old Man Crotchett to catch tadpoles).
In Orson Scott Card’s book, Petra acts as a sort of mentor and trusted ally to Ender, and is known for being tomboyish and aggressive—a character Steinfeld can obviously play, given her work in True Grit. And speaking of typecasting, Harrison Ford is reportedly still in the running to play Colonel Hyrum Graff, the authoritative father figure who is also kind of a jerk. (Incidentally, this is our second story of the day about films that involve fighting alien bugs, suggesting we may be on the verge of another Snow White/Frankenstein trend.)