Steven Spielberg is set to direct Ready Player One, the highly anticipated project based on the popular sci-fi book by Ernest Cline that takes place in a virtual world. What a coup for Warner Bros, which will bring it to the screen along with Village Roadshow. This is expected to be Spielberg’s next movie after The BFG.
Ready Player One also marks the director’s return to Warner Bros after a 14-year absence. The last picture he directed there was A.I. Artificial Intelligence in 2001, which the grandmaster Stanley Kubrick had developed there. Before that, it was Empire Of The Sun (1987) and the critically acclaimed The Color Purple (1985). He also produced Gremlins and Goonies in the mid-1980s for the studio. “We are thrilled to welcome Steven back to Warner Bros,” said Greg Silverman, the studio’s President of Creative Development and Worldwide Production. “We had an historic series of collaborations in the 1980s and 1990s and have wanted to bring him back for years.”
Spielberg and his films are actually mentioned in the 2011 book. “I also absorbed the complete filmographies of each of his favorite directors, “says the main character Wade Watts at one point as he’s studying the interests of digital utopia creator James Donovan Halliday. “Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And of course Kevin Smith.” There are also references to the Indiana Jones franchise, which Spielberg directed, and E.T. in the wide ranging cultural touchpoints of Ready Player One.
Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand, The Avengers) wrote the latest script after taking over the duties from Cline and Eric Eason (A Better Life). Interestingly, Penn and Cline worked together on the video game documentary Atari: Game Over and have said to be collaborating on the Ready Player One script extremely well for some time.
Plot of the Book:
In the year 2044, Wade Watts, like most of humanity, escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia. Like others, Wade dreams of discovering a virtual Easter Egg that lies concealed within one of thousands of virtual worlds by the OASIS's creator, the late James Halliday. Halliday stipulated in his will that the person who discovers the egg will inherit his entire estate, including management and control of the OASIS itself.
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