Ready Player One

In 2045, much of humanity escapes a collapsing world by logging into the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe built by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday. When Halliday dies, his will turns his enormous fortune, and control of the OASIS itself, over to whoever finds the digital Easter egg he hid somewhere inside it. The announcement sets off a worldwide contest. Wade Watts, a young player with no heroic credentials, stumbles onto the first clue and is drawn into a frantic treasure hunt through a strange and dangerous virtual world, with powerful interests also pursuing the prize.

Steven Spielberg directed the film, the thirty-seventh of forty features in his directing career in chronological order, following The Post and preceding West Side Story. Zak Penn and Ernest Cline wrote the screenplay, and Spielberg produced with Donald De Line and Dan Farah. Tye Sheridan plays Wade, alongside Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller and Simon Pegg. The production, mounted by Warner Bros. Pictures with Amblin Entertainment and other partners, cost 175 million USD and returned 583 million USD worldwide.

On IMDb, the film holds 7.4/10 from 539,000 votes, and on TMDB it sits at 7.6/10 from 17,379 votes. A critics' rating of 6.8/10 from 442 reviews places it slightly below the audience scores, which indicates a broadly favorable but not unanimous reception.