It appears as though our time within the Oasis is far from over. It may just be a while before we journey back to the world of easter eggs, life-threatening games, and overlapping media platforms. Considering how much we loved both Steven Spielberg’s 2018 Ready Player One and Ernest Cline’s 2020 sequel- Ready Player Two, we’re more than happy to wait. There were slight whispers of a potential cinematic sequel circulating around the time of the book’s release, but the idea quickly became dormant with no further updates… Until now.
Speaking exclusively with The Direct during the red carpet event for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Ready Player One writer Zak Penn confirmed that the sequel is very much alive and in early development, saying, “I am working on it.” It’s not a lot, but this is our first major update in quite some time.
In 2020, amid the pandemic when escapism really proved its worth, Ready Player One author Ernest Cline (Pillot Productions) gave an early, yet somewhat promising update about a Ready Player Two adaptation, stating that “conversations have begun with Warner Bros,” but it was very much a “wait and see” situation.
“Conversations have begun with Warner Bros. about possibly making a movie based on this book. But Hollywood’s kind of in stasis right now, so we’re all kind of living in uncertainty at this point in the film industry. But yeah, I think there’s a chance. The first book, I never in a million years imagined it could be a movie, because all the licensing and stuff that would be required, but by some miracle, that book found its way to the one film director who could get the rights to pretty much anything that we could think of. So this time around, I’m a lot more optimistic about it becoming a movie someday, but we will have to wait and see.”
During an interview with Inverse, Cline confirmed that a sequel adaptation had reach the early stages of development.
“It’s in the early stages right now, 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. We 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’t alive in the book. I focused on trying to give fans the book without letting the film influence me. The movie will sort itself out later.”
To have even a small update is incredibly exciting. Even if it was the smallest of updates, something is better than nothing. Hopefully if the project comes to fruition soon, we’ll have something more substantial for you. Will the original cast return? Will it differ significantly to the book? There are so many questions we have to prepare ourselves for and we are so ready to get those answers.
The sequel is much grander in scale with the biggest section taking place in Middle Earth, but as we saw in Ready Player One, many of the locations and references changed to better suit the audience. So it will be interesting to see whether this adaptation will adhere to the book or evolve to reflect the modern audience. Only time will tell.
As always, we’ll keep you posted. For now, you can check out all of the latest movie news right here.
