'Ready Player One' Still Loading: Casting Speculation Begins
May 22, 2012 · from the Word & Film archive
Ernest Cline's Ready Player One sold to Warner Bros. before the novel even hit shelves in 2011, and a year later the project sits in the busiest kind of development limbo: everyone agrees it will be enormous, and no one agrees how. Which hasn't stopped the fan-casting.
The novel — a 2045 treasure hunt through a virtual universe built from 1980s pop culture — presents a unique legal boss battle: its plot literally requires DeLorean, Gundam and a dozen other franchises on screen. Any studio adapting it must clear rights at a scale no film has attempted, which narrows the realistic director list to people studios cannot say no to.
Current speculation swirls around exactly that tier, with fans campaigning openly for the filmmaker whose 1980s output the book spends 400 pages worshipping. Cline, a screenwriter himself (Fanboys), is adapting with Zak Penn.
Update: the campaign worked. Steven Spielberg — the book's patron saint — directed the 2018 film, clearing rights no one else could and tactfully minimizing his own cameos. The wait, for once, delivered the boss.
