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How To Morally Carbon Offset The Cost Of Going To See Ender's Game – UPDATED

ender's game quad prize

Brendon's Update: Before you get to Rich's story below, I want to include the preface that, according to many good sources, Orson Scott Card won't see a single cent from your Ender's Game ticket. He got his money back for the option in the 90s and he won't see a penny more and has no form of back-end participation at all. There's more about this at The Wrap but it's something echoed by everybody I know who is at all involved in the industry. I could get point out, of course, that somebody with incredibly unsavoury social or political beliefs will profit every time you see any movie or buy a basket of groceries, but that's not the exact point in question here. And there's really no reason you shouldn't support the good causes Rich mentions in any case. Now. Here's the original story…

So Ender's Game is out today in the US. It's meant to be a good movie. Everyone wants to see it. If it wasn't for the fact its based on a book by Orson Scott Card, a virulent homophobe and supporter of the anti-gay marriage movement. His half apology didn't seem to cut it for many.

But there is a way.

Okay, so some money from your ticket may, theoretically, find its way into the purses of an anti-gay marriage group. But how much? Say your ticket costs $12. Now a studio on average gets about half that. $6. The advertising budget probably grabs $2 of that, and as for the cost of making the movie… well that probably takes the remaining $4. But somewhere in there, money goes to Scott Card. Let's completely exaggerate the amount and say ten cents. Of course Card pays taxes, there's his cost of living, and the fact that he doesn't give all his remaining money to groups wanting people who love each other not to marry simply because their genitalia reflects the other.

Maybe two cents at the max goes towards such horrible people. And that's two cents that you'll be paying. Four if you go as a couple.

Well, just as you can carbon offset a flight across the Atlantic, so you can card offset the price of going to see Ender's Game. Make a donation to Marriage Equality USA. Or how about It Gets Better? And yes, plenty of people in the cinemas won't be doing that, so why not pay for twenty-five of them and donate fifty cents? A dollar if you're going as a couple? And then you could watch Ender's Game completely guilt free.

This kind of offsetting could catch on. Maybe you could kirby offset the cost of going to see Thor by sending fifty cents each to the HERO charity that looks after veterans of the comic book industry. Maybe DC Comics could do the same with Card's Superman story that they are now never going to publish.

Any other suggestions?


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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