The first film<\/span>, adapted from Ernest Cline\u2019s best-selling 2011 novel and directed by Steven Spielberg, was a major box office hit when it arrived in cinemas in 2018, taking an impressive $582.9 million worldwide, so it\u2019s hardly surprising that a sequel is currently in the works, based on Cline\u2019s 2020 follow-up<\/span><\/a> titled, you guessed it, Ready Player Two.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Crammed full of pop culture references nodding at everything from hit video games like Street Fighter to movie classics like Back to the Future and comic books like Batman, Ready Player One takes place in a dystopian near future, when climate change and an energy crisis have prompted people to seek refuge in a virtual reality universe called the Oasis.<\/span><\/p>\n When the Oasis\u2019s creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance) dies, his in-game avatar Anorak announces a competition, inviting players to find the Easter egg hidden inside the simulation. The winner will become the new owner of the Oasis and receive half a trillion dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n Among those taking part is Wade Watts, an orphan who uses the avatar Parzival in the game and is played by Tye Sheridan in the film. Teaming up with friends like Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and Aech (Lena Waithe), he travels to different planets in the Oasis to retrieve a series of keys that will help lead them to the Easter egg, dodging the villainous tech CEO Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn)\u2019s attempts to take the prize for himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p> The film adaptation received mixed reviews, but the blend of relentless pop culture nods and impressive CGI world-building with classic Spielbergian adventure clearly proved successful with cinemagoers around the globe, meaning that anticipation for the second book was high when it was announced in the summer of 2020.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Cline\u2019s sequel was almost a decade in the making, but picks up just days after the first book\u2019s ending, and reveals what happens after Wade is placed in charge of the Oasis following his successful quest. The author, who collaborated with co-writer Zak Penn on the first film\u2019s screenplay, was inspired to work on a second book when he saw Ready Player One\u2019s sci-fi universe coming to life during the production process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I really started writing until they started production on the movie, which got me back into living in the world of Ready Player One,\u201d he told Entertainment Weekly<\/span><\/a> in 2020. \u201cThat\u2019s when I started to really write the sequel.\u201d The prospect of a second movie helped propel him forward \u2013 as did some nudges from Spielberg (what a double whammy of motivation).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI knew then there was like a ticking clock because if the movie does well, then they\u2019re going to want to make a movie sequel,\u201d he revealed to EW. \u201cAnd if there\u2019s no book to base the sequel on, then that won\u2019t stop them. So that motivated me and it was great because as we were finishing the movie, Steven started to ask me questions about what the sequel might be about so he could get that into the ending of the first movie.\u201d Talk about pressure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Details may be scarce right now, but here is what we know so far about the Ready Player One sequel (with some spoilers for the first film<\/strong> ahead).<\/span><\/p>\n Cline has revealed that a film sequel is already in the works, albeit in the \u201cearly stages\u201d of development. Speaking to Inverse<\/span><\/a> in December 2020, shortly after the release of the book Ready Player Two, he confirmed plans to bring part two to the big screen, with the caveat that \u201cHollywood is in limbo right now\u201d as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI can tell from the experience of making the first movie that everybody had a lot of fun,\u201d he added. \u201cWe talked about the possibility of there being a Ready Player Two when we were making Ready Player One. In Hollywood you never know. I really tried my best to focus on just writing a sequel to my book. There are characters in the movie that are alive that aren\u2019t alive in the book. I focused on trying to give the fans the book without letting the film influence me. The movie will sort itself out later.\u201d Aside from Cline\u2019s confirmation, though, details about the second movie are few and far between, and a director is yet to be attached to the project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Recently Spielberg has been occupied directing The Fabelmans, a semi-autobiographical drama starring Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, and serving as an executive producer on projects like the fifth Indiana Jones movie and upcoming series Masters of the Air. He has also spoken about the challenges involved in bringing Ready Player One\u2019s intricate sci-fi world to the big screen, describing the adaptation as one of the most difficult projects he has worked on across his decades in the film business, thanks to the extensive CGI work required to recreate Oasis\u2019s virtual realm.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the third most difficult [film] I\u2019ve made after Jaws and Saving Private Ryan,\u201d he told Empire magazine. \u201cI think there is a distinction between a physical challenge, which was both Jaws and Saving Private Ryan, and another kind of challenge, which is trying to do something technologically new that has never been done before\u2026 I had to learn how to make a film like this while I was making a film like this. And that means a lot of trial and error.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Still, Cline has spoken of his hopes that Spielberg could be persuaded to come back on board. \u201cI really hope that if we do make another one, that he would do it,\u201d the author told Collider<\/span><\/a>. \u201cMichael Crichton, the novelist, is the only one to get that lucky and have two of his books made into movies by Steven [Jurassic Park and The Lost World], but maybe I\u2019ll get lucky, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The second instalment begins just nine days after Wade wins Halliday\u2019s scavenger hunt and is put in control of the Oasis. He discovers an inscription on the Easter egg which points him in the direction of an Oasis Neural Interface headset, a new piece of tech invented by Halliday but never released to the public.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It allows the user to experience all of their real world sensations in the game, but its use must be limited to 12 hours per day to avoid dangerous sensory overload. Unsure about the ethics of his latest development, Halliday decided to leave the question of whether or not to roll out the ONI to his successor, meaning that the decision lies in Wade\u2019s hands.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a question that causes friction among him and his friends, especially with his love interest Art3mis, but Wade eventually gives the green light for the headsets to be made available to the public. Once a certain number of them have been sold, a new challenge goes live, asking players to find seven \u201cshards\u201d hidden in the game world in order to piece together the Siren\u2019s Soul. Cue another quest that will lead Wade and his pals to various worlds within the Oasis \u2013 which are teeming with pop culture references, just like those seen in the original story \u2013 and shed new light on the making of the game world, including a love triangle between Halliday, his Oasis co-founder Ogden Morrow, and Morrow\u2019s wife, Kira.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s possible, of course, that the film version could deviate from some of the book\u2019s plot points, just as the first movie made some changes to the original<\/span><\/a>, altering the structure of some of the quests for the keys and, as Cline previously noted, refraining from killing off some characters too, like Wade\u2019s fellow gamer Daito (played in the film by Win Morisaki).<\/span><\/p>\n Sheridan has previously spoken of his desire to return to the Oasis for a second film, telling ComicBook<\/span><\/a> that he has his \u201cfingers crossed\u201d and \u201chope[s] we get to do another,\u201d while his co-star Cooke has told Digital Spy<\/span><\/a> that should a sequel happen, she has already signed up. \u201cI\u2019ve signed my life away, so I\u2019m contracted to sequels,\u201d she said shortly after the first film\u2019s release, albeit with the caveat \u201cI haven\u2019t heard anything.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The first film drew in an impressive array of stars, from Rylance as Halliday and Simon Pegg as his Oasis co-creator Ogden Morrow to Master of None\u2019s Waithe and Rogue One\u2019s Mendelsohn, but with movie number two currently in the early stages of development, there\u2019s no word yet on which members of the supporting cast might reprise their roles. Characters like Waithe\u2019s Aech and Anorak, the Oasis avatar of Halliday, continue to play key parts in the second book, though, as does the villain of the piece, Sorrento.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The first book and film manage to pack in a staggering array of cultural callbacks, from a recreation of The Shining\u2019s Overlook Hotel to the DeLorean DMC-12 car that Wade drives. There are plenty of nostalgic nods to films and games from the \u201870s, \u201880s and \u201890s, but Spielberg decided against including many references to his own works from that period (though the T-Rex from Jurassic Park still makes an appearance).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The director was able to use \u201c80 per cent\u201d of the properties mentioned in the book, largely thanks to his industry clout, but licensing restrictions meant that certain references had to be written out. One of those references was a scene based on Blade Runner, which was vetoed as, had Ready Player One stuck to its original release date in winter 2017, it might have overlapped with the release of the sequel Blade Runner 2049. \u201cI actually at one point wrote a sequence set in Blade Runner and I think the problem was they knew the new Blade Runner was gonna come out right around then,\u201d Penn later revealed<\/span><\/a>. \u201cI think I had somebody driving Deckard\u2019s car and I think they didn\u2019t give us the right to do it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Ready Player Two crams in an equally eclectic line-up of references. One planet, Shermer, is named after the fictionalised Illinois town in which John Hughes set many of his \u201880s teen movies, and throws together his characters in one high school. Their challenge revolves around Hughes\u2019s film Pretty in Pink, and includes some meta nods to some near-miss casting decisions. Another world is based upon J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s fantasy works, with references to The Silmarillion, a collection of stories which take place thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A further location, Afterworld, is dedicated to Prince, where the gang must battle seven villainous versions of the singer from different eras in his career. As the Blade Runner anecdote proves, though, referring to famous films, games and figures in print is one thing, but bringing them into a film is another. This segment is one that might prove particularly difficult to adapt for the screen, as the late musician\u2019s estate controls the rights to his image; when plans were leaked for a hologram of the star to appear during Justin Timberlake\u2019s 2018 Superbowl performance, they were quickly quashed, perhaps because Prince described \u201cthe whole virtual reality thing\u201d as \u201cdemonic\u201d in a 1998 interview. Maybe Abba\u2019s digital avatars could step in instead\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWill there be a sequel to Ready Player One?<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>What happens in Ready Player Two?<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>What has the cast of Ready Player One said about a sequel?<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
Which pop culture references feature in Ready Player Two?\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n