Are you ready and waiting patiently for: READY PLAYER ONE..

Ready Player One is steeped in pop culture, especially that of the 1980s, and as Steven Spielberg was such a huge part of that decade, delivering a string of landmark movies that remain influential to this day, you might think it will be a bit tricky to cut him out. But if you’ve read Ernest Cline’s book, you will know how full-to-bursting it is with geek references, both overt and oblique; there will be more than enough to go around.

Any time Mr Spielberg directs a movie it’s a big, big, big deal. Any time a best-selling, fan-favorite novel gets a big screen adaptation, i’s a really big, big, big deal. When the two cross the known and unknown universe and happens to combine, as they will for 2018’s cinematic translation of Ernest Cline’s (one of my favourite) pop culture saturated book Ready Player One, you guessed it, it’s a damn, big, biggish 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 culturedemandsgeeks do with many major upcoming releases, we thought we’d take the opportunity and 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, we all asked? 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 in our little universe 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 (I still miss you Han), even Steven Spielberg didn’t want to mess with that far, far away galaxy, and the Ready Player One movie was pushed back (and rightly so!) 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. But 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. So I 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 (don’t worry, it’s not the iconic 90s band), where people do everything from go to school, work, and even just hang out with friends in virtual basements on virtual couches (hang on-we do that now, don’t we?).

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 the Ready Player One book follows his quest as he searches for the Easter Egg and clues, and the movie follows the same arc.

WADE WATTS (Tye Sheridan)

Above: superhero role of Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse Thanks, Marvel Entertainment Group, and the people at 20th Century Fox

The protagonist of Ready Player One, 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 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 (but we won’t go into that film, there was a dinosaur in it, for bleeding sake). 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 with Scouts 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.

Art3mis (Olivia Cooke)

Wade Watts is far from alone on his journey in Ready Player One. He has a number of friends, associates, and well-wishers who lend him a helping hand along the way, but none are as important as Art3mis. The Oasis avatar alter ego of Samantha Evelyn Cook, Art3mis is another famous gunter, one that Wade also happens to have a major cyber crush on, which complicates things as they’re in direct competition. Throughout the course of the narrative of Ready Player One, Art3mis is by turns a rival, a partner in crime, an ally, and a love interest for Wade. Again, due to the online nature of much of their relationship-Art3mis is from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, while Wade starts out in Oklahoma City-it will be interesting to see how their relationship develops and is portrayed in the Ready Player One movie (we all know how long distance relationships turn out, folks!).

As Art3mis is one of the key characters in the book, it’s a rather important role to cast in the film. And, as with casting Wade, Steven Spielberg and company went with another young up and comer, British actress Olivia Cooke (she was actually cast before Tye Sheridan was cast as Wade). Similar to her co-star, Cooke has put together a stellar list of acting credits at just 22-years-old. Getting her start on British television in 2012 with Blackout and The Secret of Crikey Hall (and, err,  a One Direction video), Cooke is probably best known for her current run on the Psycho prequel series, Bates Motel.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by David Fisher Simon Pegg ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ film premiere, London, Britain – 16 Dec 2015

Also joining the cast is Simon Pegg (we bow at your feet in a god-like awareness Mr Pegg and feed you biscuits and tea until you can not eat or drink anymore), yes, the one and only joins as Ogden Morrow, and best friend of creator James Halliday.

Ogden Morrow and James Halliday are described as the Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs of MMO gaming, in that they’re a “partnership destined to alter the course of human history”

But Ogden puts the “gregarious” in Gregarious Simulation Systems, the partnership created by Halliday and Morrow. If it were Halliday by himself, Nutso Recluse Simulation Systems might have been a better name, even if it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Og’s the sane one of the duo, having better social skills, a more positive public image, and a marriage.

The most sane thing he did was, in fact, to get away from the OASIS, which consumed Halliday’s life and his sanity. Distressed at the direction OASIS was heading, Og went on to create educational software (like a 21st-century Oregon Trail) for kids, in an effort to better the planet. If Halliday is a foil for Wade, who is purely focused on himself and his own personal gain, then Morrow might just be a foil for Art3mis, who wants to use her share of the money to benefit the world.

The creator off the expansive virtual reality world called Oasis (James Halliday) is played by Mark Rylance. The big bad (Nolan Sorrento) will be played by Ben Mendelsohn, who will add that extra villainous charm to the role as, an executive for an Internet corporation that has designs on Oasis.

Set photos, early shots of what to expect from the coming movie.

Spielberg will produce “Ready Player One” with Donald De Line, Dan Farah and Kristie Macosko Krieger, while Bruce Berman will executive produce. Warner Bros. will release “Ready Player One” on March 30, 2018.

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