Are you ready to get smacked in the face with another barrage of nostalgia and random pop culture references? A sequel to Steven Spielberg‘s “Ready Player One” could already be in the works thanks to the pandemic. “Ready Player One” author Ernest Cline has revealed during a chat with Inverse that his follow-up novel “Ready Player Two” is now in the gestation phase of development at Warner Bros. However, he doesn’t mention who will be writing the script or who will be directing it.
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“It’s in the early stages right now,” Cline tells Inverse, “especially since Hollywood is in limbo right now. But I can tell from the experience of making the first movie that everybody had a lot of fun.”
Here is an official synopsis of the sequel novel penned by Cline.
“Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday’s vault, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous, and addictive, than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle and a new quest. A last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who will kill millions to get what he wants. Wade’s life and the future of the Oasis are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.”
The original earned an impressive $582.8 million globally on a $175 million budget, so we can’t be too shocked that the studio wants another installment.
The cast from the first film consisted of Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, Mark Rylance, Letitia Wright, and Simon Pegg.
It’s currently unknown if Steven Spielberg would return to direct or hand off the project to someone else instead. Spielberg recently exited “Indiana Jones 5,” and that move led to “Logan” director James Mangold to take his seat on the massive Lucasfilm project. ‘Indy 5’ begins shooting this spring, according to studio head Kathleen Kennedy. We have to assume that if Spielberg doesn’t direct “Ready Player Two,” he’ll at the very least executive produce and oversee the direction of the story like he has with many of the franchises he’s handed off, including the “Jurassic Park” series.