Ready Player One, the upcoming film directed by Steven Spielberg based on the VR-centric novel by Ernest Cline, just saw its first teaser trailer, released at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.
As written by Cline, Ready Player One follows Wade Watts on his journey through the OASIS, a pervasive virtual reality program that nearly everyone on the planet visits using their VR headsets. As a high schooler living in ‘the stacks’—trailers grafted together into large and dangerous towers—Wade’s only respite is a rusted out old van hidden away in a junkyard where he accesses the OASIS. After the death of eccentric OASIS’ architect James Halliday, a billionaire genius who in Willy Wonka-fashion offers up the rights to the OASIS and all of his money for anyone who can win the grand Easter egg hunt he’s left behind, Wade sets out to solve the cryptic game left behind by Halliday. The catch: before his death, Halliday was obsessed with ’80s pop culture, so Wade must immerse himself in everything from books, music, TV, and film from the era to truly understand the mind of the man who built the most important VR program in the world.
Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Cline and Zak Penn, the Ready Player One film is charging up an all-star cast, including Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, and T. J. Miller.
According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, Spielberg said the film is “the most amazing flash-forward and flashback at the same time about a decade I was very involved in, the ’80s, and a flash-forward to a future that is awaiting all of us, whether we like it or not.”
Ready Player One is slated to hit theaters on March 30, 2018.