Ready Player Oneis one of those books that seem impossible to adapt.Ernest Cline’s 2011 Sci-Fi dystopia has been called unfilmable, no doubt a daunting task to any filmmaker thanks to a dual set realities – one in a dystopian future America and one inside the fantastical virtual reality game people use to escape it – and a whole heap of nostalgic 1980s pop culture references that must have been a licensing nightmare alone, before you even get to figuring out how to translate them to the screen. (Example: at one point, the lead character has to recreateWar Games as Matthew Broderick’s character.)
ButReady Player Oneisn’t being directed by just any filmmaker, it’s gotSteven Spielbergat the helm; a director who’s both uniquely qualified to capture that ’80s Amblin spirit and equally at peril of indulgent self-reference (Spielberg has said he cut most of the nods of his own work). A director who has never shied from technology and who we all know beyond the shadow of a doubt can create an immersive cinematic world. But the big mystery has been – how will he do it? Now, we’ve got a couple hints
X-Men ApocalypsestarTye Sheridanis taking on the lead role of Wade Watts and his in-game avatar Parzival forReady Player One, and the actor offered some insight into the filming and story process when I caught up with him for his upcoming thrillerDetour.
For one thing, Sheridan says the film will be set about 60% in the digital world known as The OASIS, and confirmed that Spielberg is sticking to the bones of Cline’s story.
60% of the film takes place in this virtual video game and 40% takes place in the real world.
The idea of the film — it’s established that this video game this virtual reality game is much more glamorous than the real world; people have jobs inside of this game which is called the OASIS, people spend their lives inside this video game. My character is kind of this loser in the real world, but in this video game the creator of the game dies and leaves behind an easter egg hidden inside of the game that holds his trillions of dollars and control of the game and he says whoever finds it in the game is the person who should take over the OASIS. So five years go by, no one’s found the easter egg and — there are three keys to get to the easter egg — he’s the first one to find the first key. So his avatar becomes famous in the video game, where in the real world he’s still kind of this loser, so he’s juggling both.
As for the 60% of the film set in The OASIS, it sounds like Spielberg is turning to motion-capture once again after the success of his impressive technical achievements on rendering the titular giant inThe BFGand, before that, the entirely animatedTintin.
We shot for the first seven, eight weeks in Mo-Cap. Everything that happens in The Oasis is all shot in motion capture.
Another big mystery has been what the avatars will look like, and while we still have that answer, it seems there’s one person Parzival won’t look like – Tye Sheridan. Asked if Sheridan had the opportunity to help design the physicality or image of Parzival, the actor revealed he doesn’t yet know what the in-game character looks like.
No, that’s still kind of a mystery to me. I don’t know what the Avatar looks like, but I’ve heard that it doesn’t look like myself.
Ready Player Onealso starsMark Rylance,Simon Pegg,Olivia Cooke,T.J. Miller, andBen Mendelsohnopens in theaters on June 19, 2025.
