Source: CinemaBlend.com
Ever since virtual reality became a big thing I wonder what it would be if we would live in some kind of world like The Matrix. Where the outside world is a cruel place and the only way to escape is to be virtually in another place. This is something where Ernie Cline also thought about because he wrote a book about it: Ready Player One. And I can tell you that the movie is only a year away! Here is what we know so far:
1. The Story
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 The Oasis, where people do everything from going 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 eccentric billionaire who created Oasis, revealed a massive pop-culture saturated puzzle, a kind of sprawling scavenger hunt. Whoever solves this riddle and finds Halliday’s Easter Eggs 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 gamers from around the world include outcast teenager Wade Watts, a poor kid from the Stacks who escapes from his bleak surroundings through The Oasis. Wade joins the adventure five years after the announcement, and quickly finds himself opposed against powerful corporate rivals and other ruthless competitors who will do anything, in The Oasis or the real world, to reach the treasure first.
Source: ChrisBevan89 Twitter
2. The Book
Ready Player One is based on the first novel by ‘Fanboys’ screenwriter Ernie Cline. Not only did he write the book, he is also one of the people who adapted the novel for the screen. If there’s anyone who will take great care with the translation from the page to the screen, it’s going to be the person who created this world in the first place. So even if there are changes made in the translation, those changes will be made by the man behind all of this. It was his first ever novel that was released in 2011 and got many awards in 2012.
Source: ReadyPlayerOne.com
3. The Cast & Crew
Creating this movie will be the job of Steven Spielberg because he is the director. This is an interesting choice since there are many references to himself and the previous movies that he made. Spielberg has stated that most of the references will be removed from the film, but he has confirmed that Wade will still have his custom DeLorean. Of course known from the iconic Back to the Future films.
The characters with their respective actors are:
Wade Owen Watts a.k.a. Parzival, played by Tye Sheridan: an orphan from the “stacks” surrounding metropolitan Oklahoma City. Wade names his OASIS character Parzival after the Arthurian knight involved in the quest for the holy grail and dedicates his life to finding James Halliday’s Easter egg.
James Donovan Halliday a.k.a. Anorak, played by Mark Rylance: creator of OASIS. A big fan of 1980s culture, he announces in his will his plans to leave his entire fortune to whoever can find his Easter egg that he had hidden in OASIS. His character was initially inspired from Willy Wonka who Cline described as a “rich eccentric holding a fantastic contest”.
Aech, played by Hannah John-Kamen: Wade’s best friend, fellow gunter, and rival in the quest to find the egg. Aech’s speciality is in PvP and first-person shooter games and is one of the top combatants on OASIS. Although Aech’s avatar is an athletic white heterosexual male, Aech is played by an African-American lesbian named Helen Harris, who grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.
Art3mis a.k.a Samantha Evelyn Cook, played by Olivia Cooke: a famous female gunter and blogger. Wade has a huge cyber-crush on her, which is complicated by their competition in search of the egg. She chose her avatar’s name from the Greek goddess of the hunt. Her real name is Samantha Evelyn Cook from Vancouver, British Columbia and she has a port-wine stain on her face.
Ogden “Og” Morrow, played by Simon Pegg: Co-creator of the OASIS and best friend of James Halliday. They founded the video game company Gregarious Games, where he would handle the business operations, and which would later become Gregarious Simulation Systems (GSS), the company that launched Oasis. His appearance and personality are described as being “a cross between Albert Einstein and Santa Claus.” He rarely appears in public, and only shows up on the Oasis once a year on his birthday, where assumes the avatar of the Great and Powerful Og.
Daito, played by Win Morisaki, is one of the two Japanese gunters who rise to the top of the scoreboard early on in the hunt, working in a team with ‘brother’, Shoto, played by Philip Zhao. The pair has a generally tense, but sometimes friendly relationship with Parzival, Aech, and Art3mis. Daito’s real name is revealed to be Toshiro Yoshiaki, while Shoto’s real name is Akihide Karatsu.
Nolan Sorrento a.k.a IOI-655321, played by Ben Mendelsohn: the head of operations at Innovative Online Industries (IOI), the multinational corporation that serves as an Internet service provider for most of the world, and that plans to take over and monetize the OASIS. Sorrento is head of IOI’s Oology division, which is dedicated to searching for Halliday’s Easter egg. His avatar name is created after his employee number by IOI.
i-R0k played by TJ Miller: an online troll.
The movie is scheduled to be released on March 30, 2018, after the previous date of December 15, 2017, would make it collide with Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Spielberg getting rights to all these properties in the book will be next to impossible but he easily substitute. What do you think of the Simon Pegg casting? Personally I’m not on board with it. The rest of the casting is stellar, especially Mendelsohn as Sorrento.
Knowing Spielberg he’ll find a way to make it work without acquiring all the rights, but I’m slightly disappointed that he won’t use much of his own work. I mean getting those rights is fairly simple. I’m definitely curious to see what Simon Pegg has to offer to the film, I only know him in the more ‘comical’ roles and I’m not sure if he’ll be a good Ogden Morrow. But I guess time will tell. And you are right, Mendelsohn is perfect for playing Sorrento!