READY PLAYER ONE is Going to Be "Classic Steven Spielberg"

Movie Steven Spielberg Ready Player One about 8 years agoby Ben Pearson

One of the big draws of Ernie Cline's Ready Player One novel is that the story is stuffed with references to '80s pop culture, and the main character relies on picking up on those references in order to try to solve puzzles that could lead him to ultimate victory. But the book tips its hat to dozens of different movies, games, TV shows, and music whose rights span multiple studios, so as soon as the film adaptation was announced, fans wondered if the filmmakers would be able to wrangle all of those elements into one movie.

/Film spoke with producer Donald DeLine at WonderCon this past weekend, and he has good news:

“We’ve had pretty darn good luck with getting all the various games and characters and brands to sign on,” DeLine said. “They were excited about it.”

So fans who were hoping to see some of the book's biggest moments come to life can breathe a sigh of relief. And according to DeLine, so can fans of director Steven Spielberg:

“[The movie is] classic Steven Spielberg, right in the center of the sweet spot of really his classic work, but with this whole new world now,” DeLine said. “There could be no one better to bring this to the screen.”

I'm still very interested to see if Spielberg decides to include references to things that he was directly involved with earlier in his career, like the DeLorean from Back to the Future (Spielberg executive produced BTTF). It'll also be fascinating to see how this movie stacks up against the iconic movies in the director's filmography.

Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Simon Pegg, and Ben Mendelsohn star, and the film arrives in theaters on March 30, 2018.

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.