Ready Player One Movie: What We Know So Far
Any time Steven Spielberg directs a movie it's a big deal. Any time a best-selling, fan-favorite novel gets a big screen adaptation, it's a big deal. When the two happen to combine, as they will for 2018's cinematic translation of Ernest Cline's pop culture saturated book Ready Player One, you guessed it, it's a big deal.
The Ready Player One movie is still a long way off, but it's been in development for years---even before Ernest Cline's novel hit bookstores in 2011, it already had a movie deal in place. Building up towards productions, Steven Spielberg and company have been putting the pieces for the Ready Player One cast in place, and as we do with many major upcoming releases, we thought we'd take the opportunity run through everything we know so far about the project.
Ready Player One's Release Date
In what was probably a very smart business move, the Ready Player One movie recently swapped out its release date. Why was this a smart move, you ask? Ready Player One is based on a popular book with a built in audience, along with one of the most revered modern directors, Steven Spielberg, at the helm---it has a lot going for it, right? Well, it was originally slated to open on December 15, 2017, but it has since been moved to March 30, 2018.
The December 2017 date was all well and good, until a little movie called Star Wars: Episode VIII switched up its release date, and wouldn't you know, it will now open December 15, 2017. After the record breaking juggernaut that was Star Wars: The Force Awakens, even Steven Spielberg didn't want to mess with that far, far away galaxy, and the Ready Player One movie was pushed back and will now open March 2018, where it won't have to go toe-to-toe with anything Star Wars related.
What is Ready Player One rated?
As we're still early in the process, there's not much concrete news on the rating of the Ready Player One movie. Using what we know, however, we can make a relatively educated guess. With a few exceptions, Steven Spielberg doesn't usually stray into R-rated territory, at least outside of war movies like Saving Private Ryan, and weighty dramas like Schindler's List.
In addition to that, the Ready Player One book, while full of adventure and harrowing situations, never strays too far into more adult realms. The protagonist is fairly young, there's not much violence or sex to speak of---certainly nothing that can't be easily circumvented---and all in all, the subject matter is rather tame in the ways that might earn a movie a more restrictive rating. With all of this in mind, we guess the Ready Player One rating will be PG-13, but it's possible it'll get a PG rating. Maybe they'll let a curse word or two slip just to make sure it's not too wholesome.
What Ready Player One Is About?
Ready Player One takes place in the dystopian future of 2044. The world is an ugly, nasty, overcrowded place where most people live in "stacks," which are literally mobile homes piled on top of one another to near skyscraper heights. In this dismal setting, much of the population escapes into an expansive virtual reality world called Oasis, where people do everything from go to school, work, and even just hang out with friends in virtual basements on virtual couches.
When he died with no heirs, James Halliday, the creator of Oasis, revealed a massive pop-culture saturated puzzle, a kind of sprawling scavenger hunt. Whoever solves this riddle and finds Halliday's Easter Egg becomes the owner of Oasis and is immediately the richest, most powerful person on the planet. So, of course, everyone wants to be the winner, and these people are called "gunters," short for Egg hunters. This group includes the protagonist, Wade Watts, a poor kid from the Stacks, and the plot of theReady Player One book follows his quest as he searches for the Easter Egg and clues, and the Ready Player One movie follows the same arc.
The Director
There are a number of elements that make a Ready Player One movie a difficult feat to accomplish. First, nearly every paragraph is saturated with references to films, comics, toys, TV shows, video games, and every facet of pop culture you can imagine. This means there are hundreds, if not thousands, of rights issues to clear. Second, much of the action of the Ready Player One book takes place in the virtual realm of Oasis, where characters control self-ascribed avatars.
With these hurdles to overcome, it's good that the Ready Player One movie is in the competent hands of a director like Steven Spielberg. With a resume that includes some of the biggest movies of all time, he'll have no problem working on this scope and scale. This is also far from his first science fiction rodeo, as he has shepherded a number of fantastic worlds to the big screen, including the likes of Jurassic Park, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and The Adventures of Tintin, among others. There's also that little movie called E.T.
One of the earliest choices Steven Spielberg made about the Ready Player One movie was to remove references to his own work, of which there are many. But as difficult as this book may be to adapt, and how closely the rabid fan base will be watching, this isn't the first time that Spielberg has been behind adapting a beloved work to movie theaters. In fact, he recently gave fans a big screen version of Roald Dahl's The BFG. While Spielberg may not be including references to his own work in Ready Player One, all connections to the director will not be omitted. Steven Spielberg did confirm that we'll see Wade's Delorean in the movie. The iconic car was featured in the Spielberg-produced Back to the Future, and plays a notable role in Wade's adventure in Ready Player One.
Ready Player One's Writers
Another thing the Ready Player One movie adaptation has going for it is that one of the people adapting the novel for the screen is none other than Ernest Cline, the author of the Ready Player One book. If there's anyone who will take great care with the translation from the page to the screen, it's going to be the guy who ushered this world into being in the first place. So even if there are changes made from the source material, those changes will be made by the man behind all of this in the first place.
While Ernest Cline is relatively young when it comes to screenwriting---his only other credit is the similarly pop culture obsessed comedy Fanboys---he'll have help in writing the Ready Player One movie. Zak Penn will be along for this particular ride, and with credits that include comic book movies like The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, and a variety of X-Men movies, as well as upcoming turns in the Transformers and Pacific Rim worlds, he certainly has the geeky credentials to help bring the Ready Player One movie to life.
Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan)
The protagonist of the Ready Player One book, as well as Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One movie, is Wade Owen Watts. Wade is a poor kid from the Stacks of Oklahoma City, but he's whip smart, and because his home sucks and the outside world is all kinds of dreary, he spends most of his time in Oasis. He goes to school and hangs out with his online buddies, but must of his efforts go into guiding his Oasis avatar, Parzival---named for Percival from Arthurian legend---in a search for clues to find James Halliday's Easter Egg. This is really a pipe dream, as everyone else, including wealthy multinational companies, has been scouring Oasis and searching movies, comics, and more for hints for years with no success. But once Wade cracks a clue, it sets off a domino effect, where new discoveries, and stiff competition, come fast and furious until someone might just solve the riddle and win Oasis.
As Wade Watts is the main character of the book and, subsequently, the Ready Player One movie, it's a big, vital role, but Steven Spielberg and company found a strong actor to fill the part: Tye Sheridan. At just 19-years-old, Sheridan has already assembled in impressive resume with a number of strong, eye-catching roles in notable indie films and beyond. When your first role is in a Terrence Malick film, The Tree of Life in this case, people are going to pay attention, but he also turned heads in David Gordon Green's Joe, Jeff Nichols' Mud, and the true-life drama The Stanford Prison Experiment. He even dipped his toe in the horror-comedy pool recently withScouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. However, it is his more recent role that will bring him, by far, the most notice, as he took over the superhero role of Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse _earlier this year. By the time the _Ready Player One movie roles around, he might pack some additional star power.