The stakes are high for Steven Spielberg's big-budget Ready Player One, which unfurls in theaters everywhere Thursday in hopes of commanding a North American start of $45 million-$50 million by the time Easter Sunday wraps.
Spielberg's movie ? costing Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow an estimated $175 million to produce before marketing ? also launches in numerous major foreign markets timed to its U.S. bow, including China. It graces the marquee only one week after another big-budget entry opened, Pacific Rim Uprising, and two weeks after Tomb Raider came along. Both of those event films have disappointed, contributing to a tough March domestically. Spielberg's sci-fi adventure, which has been embraced by critics, hopes to reverse that trend.
Ready Player One, based on Ernest Cline's pop-culture-soaked novel about a teen's quest to win control over a virtual universe, will have no trouble topping the holiday box office, but will need to do sizable business over the course of its run to land in the black.
Spielberg remains one of Hollywood's most respected directors. Ready Player One is the first film he has made for Warners since A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which was released in 2001.
At Ready Player One's Los Angeles premiere earlier this week, the filmmaker said it felt good to make a popcorn flick following period dramas The Post, opening in December 2017, and 2015's Bridge of Spies. (He didn't mention family film The BFG, a box-office disappointment released in summer 2016.) "It reminds me of the days when I did Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I had so much fun on this, it was like a vacation, even though it was incredibly hard work," Spielberg told THR at the L.A. screening, which followed the film's world premiere at SXSW.
Infused with references to the 1980s, Ready Player One stars Tye Sheridan as Wade Watts, a young man who gets caught up in the virtual-reality world known as the OASIS, which was created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Watts and his friends are determined to find the Easter eggs that will give them control of OASIS.
28-03-2018 - Vidéo
