The more news we hear, the more seriously impressed we are by the sound of Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, the film adaptation of Ernest Cline’s pop culture-infused dystopian thriller. Now, the legendary director seems to have nailed his character even more firmly to the mask, as his latest muse has been added to the film’s roster: take one giant step forward, Mark Rylance.
Having put in a memorable performance in Bridge Of Spies, and soon to take the title role in The BFG, Rylance has no shortage of experience working with Spielberg, although considering that he’s been brilliant in just about everything we’ve seen him in (2015’s Wolf Hall miniseries remains one of our non-genre TV highlights of recent years), we definitely consider his casting to be a good omen.
In Ready Player One, he will take on the role of James Donovan Halliday, the man credited with creating the OASIS system that provides the main setting of the story. Indeed, it’s the Easter Egg he left behind in the game that is the catalyst for most of the action, so he’s a very important character indeed. Inevitably, there’s quite a bit more to him than just this, but for the benefit of those of you who haven’t read the book we’ll keep quiet on that for now.
Rylance joins a cast that already includes Tye Sheridan as Wade Owen ‘Parzival’ Watts, Olivia Cooke as Samantha Eevelyn ‘Art3mis’ Cook, Ben Mendelsohn as Nolan Sorrento and Simon Pegg as Ogden Morrow, with Spielberg working from a script by Zak Penn, Eric Eason and Cline himself.
Ready Player One will be released in cinemas on 30 March 2018. You can download the Visionaries: Spielberg digital edition from GreatDigitalMags.com now. For more news about the biggest movies, pick up the new issue of SciFiNow.
