Ready Player One release date moved because of Star Wars 8

We'll have to wait a little longer to see Steven Spielberg's sci-fi epic

Steven Spielberg (Getty)

With Star Wars Episode VIII’s release date changing from May 2017 to 15 December 2017, Hollywood studios has a lot of rearranging to do. All of a sudden, the summer of 2017 was a viable time to release for films, while Christmas 2017 became a no-go zone.

Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean moved to 26 May, Sony’s Spider-Man to 7 July and Jumanji to the 28 July.

Many were left wondering whether Steven Spielberg would follow suit as Star Wars VIII is now to be released on the same day as his adaptation of Ready Player One.

Warner Bros. has wisely decided to move the film, changing its release date from 15 December 2017, to 30 March 2018. The new release date is the same as a currently-untitled Universal’s Monster franchise movie, likely The Invisible Man which just cast Johnny Depp as the lead.

Moving Ready Player One comes with a couple of benefits; it doesn’t have to compete with the sequel to a $2 billion film (The Force Awakens), it can benefit from the following Easter weekend, it falls between the Winter Olympics and World Cup, and sandwiches in-between a DC project and Avengers: Infinity War - Part 1, therefore not competing directly with either.

Ready Player One follows the story of a teenager taking part in an online treasure hunt though a virtual word called the Oasis.