UPDATE: Trailer is out.
A film of Ready Player One will be directed by the legendary filmmaker. Deadline reports on his first flick with Warner Bros. in 14 years.
With this news, a question arises about how they will bring a key element of the book’s virtual world to life for the big screen. After all, it seems imperative for the audience to feel like they were dropped into the middle of a video game.
That kind of technology is just becoming available, and if these guys implement that, this could change the face of cinema. The studio has been on the cutting edge of this kind of thing before, pushing the envelope with technology and visual effects with such films as The Lego Movie, Inception and The Matrix – all with great results. If anyone can pull it off again, it will be these guys.
RPO is about a dead VR mogul’s fortune, concealed in a vast online world, and the kids desperate–not least because of their real-world poverty or other circumstances–to find it. The contradictions of utopia, reality, virtuality and mundanity are threaded throughout, but it’s a fast-paced YA yarn too; read Mark’s review for more.
It’s a timely story, but doesn’t need to end up a thing of its time.