Steven Spielberg is a director that continues to operate at a breathless pace. The filmmaker only recently wrapped work on The BFG and now, we’re hearing that his long-awaited adaptation of Ready Player One is in active production in Birmingham, UK – and the first set photos are here to prove it.
First spotted by I Choose Birmingham (via ComingSoon), these stills give some indication of the kind of aesthetic that Spielberg and the team at Warner Bros. are aiming for, finding some common, dystopian ground between The Zero Theorem and I Am Legend. It should be noted that principal photography is just underway, so it’ll be some time yet before we see Ready Player One in motion.
Based on Ernest Cline’s cherished sci-fi novel, Ready Player One takes place in the year 2044, where society spends much of its downtime immersed in the complex virtual world of OASIS. Tye Sheridan leads the charge as Wade Watts, a “gunter (a portmanteau of egg hunter) who is the first person to discover the first of three keys left behind by the late OASIS creator James Halliday.”
Those in possession of all three keys to the virtual kingdom holds control of OASIS which, as you’d imagine, goes hand-in-hand with immense power. It’s a power that Sheridan and Olivia Cooke’s Samantha Evelyn Cook (operating under her screen name Art3mis) will hope to protect from an evil corporation out to usurp those keys for nefarious purposes. Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, Deadpool star T.J. Miller, and Ben Mendelsohn complete the cast.
Ready Player One is still a ways away, given Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi flick isn’t due to open in theaters until March 30, 2018, but with production now underway, fans can at least expect set photos to trickle out over the coming months.
