The cast for Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One film adaptation has been building up for a while now, with Olivia Cooke and Ben Mendelsohn both being confirmed in recent months. Despite this, there has been no announcement of who will be playing the lead actor: Wade ‘Parzival’ Watts. Until now.
According to Collider, Tye Sheridan (The Tree Of Life, The Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse) will play the lead role of Wade Watts, a gamer going under the codename of ‘Parzival’, who is just one of the many participants in the sprawling online utopia of the OASIS, in which he searches for clues left by the pop-culture-obsessed creator of the world. More than anything, it’s s means of escaping the crowded locale that the real world has become. But when Wade finds the first clue, he finds himself beset by rival players who are willing to go to extreme lengths, leaving him in a race against time.
Overall, we have to say that this is a strong casting choice. Sheridan has been quietly but efficiently establishing his leading-man credentials for a while now. In addition to his aforementioned films, he made memorable turns in Jeff Nichols’ Mud and David Gordon Green’s Joe. What’s more, he will no doubt gain wider fame after playing the young Cyclops in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse. With a superhero movie and a Spielberg production under his belt, mega-stardom has to beckon, surely?
With Sheridan, Cooke and Mendolsohn currently the only cast members to be confirmed, they are joined behind the scenes by Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand, Elektra) and Eric Eason (A Better Life, Manito), who are co-writing the script.
Ready Player One will be released in cinemas on 30 March 2018. For more news about the biggest films, pick up the latest issue of SciFiNow.
