New Image Debuts From Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One

Steven Spielberg’s latest movie is sure to be a hit with geeks and pop culture lovers everywhere. Based on the best-selling 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One takes place in the dystopian future of 2046 in which the globe’s bloated population spend all their time in the OASIS – a vast virtual reality filled with various characters and settings from famous movies, TV shows, video games and more.

Courtesy of the latest issue of Empire, we now have a new look at the movie. Instead of a glimpse at the universe of the OASIS, though, it showcases the real-world characters. As you can see below, we have Tye Sheridan (X-Men: Apocalypse) as protagonist Wade Watts, known as Parvizal in the OASIS, and Olivia Cooke as his fellow gamer and love interest Samantha Evelyn Cook AKA Art3mis. The image looks like Art3mis is about to don the VR headset and dive into a place of pure imagination, though beyond that, we can’t really say what’s going on here.

Empire also chatted to Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) about her experience on the film and what it was like to work with the iconic director:

 “It felt like pure adventure. It was Willy Wonka, it was Indiana Jones. When you’re a kid wanting to be an actor, the idea of working with [Spielberg] sounds absurd. It was surreal.”

Cooke’s two points of reference here are pretty spot-on. The story mostly focuses on a hunt for an elusive easter egg hidden within the OASIS that, if found, will grant the player wealth beyond their dreams. The first trailer for the film even used a remix of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory‘s “Pure Imagination.”

Ready Player One also stars Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg and T.J. Miller – not to mention the likes of Freddy Krueger, Harley Quinn and the Iron Giant – and lands in the real world on March 30th, 2018.