Fresh off some pretty glowing reactions from the film's premiere at SXSW, Warner Bros. has released a bounty of new Ready Player One movie images from director Steven Spielberg’s upcoming adaptation. Based on the novel of the same name by Ernest Cline, the film follows Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), who spends most of his time in a Virtual Reality space called the OASIS hunting for special keys that will give the winner control over the entire space. This puts him at odds with the nefarious IOI Corporation, and so Wade and his friends must battle in the real world and in the virtual space to save the OASIS.
Cline and Zak Penn wrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s adaptation, which reportedly makes some alterations to the story and characters but maintains the spirit of the novel. We already knew that much of the film was shot using performance-capture, with Spielberg wielding a CG camera, and we get to see a lot of that finished effects work in the images below, including avatars for various characters. Spielberg’s longtime cinematographer Janusz Kaminski told me recently that for the CG-set scenes, the visual effects artists studied Kaminski's lighting on other Spielberg films, notably A.I. and Minority Report. You can certainly feel that influence shine through here when it comes to the color palate and lighting.
I remain undeterred in my enthusiasm for this movie and these new images only make it seem more appealing. Check out the Ready Player One movie images below, and click on any for high-resolution. The film also stars Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, T.J. Miller, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, and Hannah John-Kamen. Ready Player One opens in theaters on March 29th.
Here’s the official synopsis for Ready Player One:
In the year 2045, the real world is a harsh place. The only time Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) truly feels alive is when he escapes to the OASIS, an immersive virtual universe where most of humanity spend their days. In the OASIS, you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone—the only limits are your own imagination. The OASIS was created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who left his immense fortune and total control of the OASIS to the winner of a three-part contest he designed to find a worthy heir. When Wade conquers the first challenge of the reality-bending treasure hunt, he and his friends—known as the High Five—are hurled into a fantastical universe of discovery and danger to save the OASIS and their world.