Enders Game/Enders Shadow/Speaker etc.

I just rewatched the Ender's game the movie for the first time since I originally watched it. Its criminally lacking in depth. The biggest problem is clearly that they just don't have the time to develop anything from the books. Everything feels rushed. Those books would develop into and absolutely incredible series if done right though. The story is almost low hanging fruit.

Start with the human's desperate fight for survival and being pummeled by the Formik hordes. Make it long and hopeless- 10-15 minutes. Things are finished and humanity is going to be destroyed and against all hope Mazer Rackham pulls a rabbit out of his hat. Let the audience watching marinate and contemplate how close humanity came to the end. Show the guiding counsels of earth figure out that if they want any chance at victory in the future every resource has to be expended to safeguard humanity's future, including any child's innocence.

Cut to a lengthier time lapsed segments on Peter and Valentine, or fold their stories in if that is better. They both hope for acceptance into battle school and are rejected. For one that makes him even more violent and damaged and for the other she becomes a better person. Show officials realize the gifted genetics their parents have and clear them to have a 3rd child, all while in reality they had already become pregnant in defiance of the law. Ender becomes the scape goat for one sibling and person to nurture for the other.

Show Ender growing, abused by also loved by opposite parties. At the same time somewhere else in the world start to show the lives of some of the other characters as they begin to prep for battle school- Petra, Alai, Fly Molo, Dink maybe random others (or fold their stories in later as we meet them. Each other represents an interesting half to full episode of information watchers will be invested in. Then give us the Ender's Game story we know and Ender going to battle school. Give us plenty of Peter and Valentine and their manipulation of world powers.

After some portions bring Bean in. Give us a hefty portion of Bean's back story (this could take 2-3 episodes) until his path meets up in Battle school. Get the watchers to a place where we are seeing Ender, Peter, Valentine, Bean and eventually Petra's experiences happening in the same episodes. This can drive the story for loads of episodes and up through the End of Battle School for Ender the audience could have seen 1-2 seasons. By the time the formiks are defeated we are a minimum of 2-3 season of 10 episodes.

The audience feels like the story is done but Ender finds the formik queen embryo and sees a light in the tunnel of his not just being a destroyer. That ends the season except some world power leader (China?) is looking at one of Ender's team (someone like Fly Molo) and saying "If we don't take power someone else will. Its his destiny to raise his people up, now the he saved the world."

From there we get seasons (probably 3-5 morre) of Ender's Shadow's world war and politics mixing in loads of Battle School kids (a bunch should have easter egg moments at battle school in the first couple seasons) and giving us Peter's story too. These books are super ripe with the type of story series fans seem to love these days- betrayal, politics, power, war, murder etc. Every now and then we get intriguing glimpses into Ender, learning from the Formik queen, still racked with guilt, writing Speaker of the Dead, discovering the game AI as a friend and Valentine trying to be with him and contributing to the growth of Humanity. Eventually this should split off into a shorter Speaker of the Dead series (personally I think those would need work to make them interesting - not enough high action warfare etc) but I still think they could get fascinating.

The end of the Shadow series culminates with peace on Earth, Ender writing The Hegemon, Bean leaving earth and the battle schoolers going to the stars to settle new world. Then we see a glimpse crossover into Ender hundreds of years in the future vilified as a Hitler but still carrying the queen and headed to a distant frontier planet where intelligent life was just found again for the first time and the queen saying something like- "Finally it is time."