I really enjoyed Ernest Cline’s ‘Ready Player One’ and I’m looking forward to seeing what Steven Spielberg does with it. That said, I had trouble getting through the first couple chapters of Armada. Also, it felt like Ready Player One did a pretty good job tying up all the loose ends by the end of the story. Still, when you’ve got a product big enough to create a blockbuster movie, it seems silly not to give it another go, right?
In a new interview with The Verge, the subject of a sequel came up and Cline was more than happy to spill the beans:
“It’s true. I can’t talk about it too much, but there’s no better inspiration for a writer [than] to return to a world they’ve already worked on when they’re watching Steven Spielberg bring that world to life.”
So, there’s no word on what we can expect, or how far into the future it takes place. Perhaps it pick up 50 years into the future with the death of Wade? That could be interesting, but does that mean it would focus on another era? It already looks like the movie is retconning the mostly 80’s nostalgia to include pop culture references that carry all the way to the present. If that’s the case, where is there left to go? It’s kind of hard to get nostalgic about something that hasn’t happened yet, and kind of redundant to focus on the same era.
Whatever the case, you can be sure that the movie rights will probably be sold before the first film even gets it’s release.
The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.