Ernest Cline interview on Ready Player One, working with Steven Spielberg, and the future of virtual reality

'Like any work of art, the book is of its time and I would not mess with it'

Ernest Cline (right) with Steven Spielberg (Rex)

“Ernest Cline is such a visionary,” Steven Spielberg once said. “He has seen the future before any of the rest of us could possibly imagine it.”

The influential filmmaker was talking about Cline in relation to his debut novel, Ready Player One, a story Spielberg has since adapted to the big screen. For those who have not read the international bestseller, the story features a dystopian future where the majority of the global populous spend their days plugged into a pop-culture filled virtual reality called the OASIS. Within the OASIS, anything’s possible: want to live as an Orc? Then be an Orc! Want to race King Kong? You can! Cast spells, fight monsters, travel through space, own a time-travelling DeLorean... players can do it all.

Ready Player One took 10 years to write, and was originally published in 2011, a time before virtual reality headsets such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Playstation VR had properly taken off. Yet, today, those devices are possible household items (for anyone with the finances). And while they perhaps don’t have quite the hardware to run the OASIS, that’s certainly becoming a possibility as developers work away to make Cline’s future a reality.

“It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways,” Cline says. “Ready Player One was published the same month Oculus was founded. The founders – Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe – both told me that they started by giving copies of Ready Player One to employees as part of their new employees package, to get them excited for working in virtual reality.”

Oculus were not the only ones to take inspiration from the book: Google and HTC followed suit, Cline’s book helping inspire them and therefore the future of virtual reality. That influence, though, will no doubt be dwarfed by the influence of upcoming movie.

“Millions of people are going to see this movie,” Cline, who also acted as a screenwriter on the movie alongside Zack Penn. “It’s the first realistic representation of virtual reality, of its potential and its potential pitfalls. It’s going to change the speed with which our whole civilisation adopts virtual reality. Movies are that powerful and Steven’s movies are that influential. There are going to be people who try it, who never would have before. And people who will work in it who never would have done otherwise.”

Of course, there are many differences between the 2018 movie and the 2011 novel – despite writing the book, Cline had to make amends to the screenplay thanks to studio influence and genuinely just making things more cinematic. I put to Cline that having to go back and change aspects of the story for the movie screenplay (considering every writer slaves over their initial work) must have been an odd experience.

For a relatively simple question, Cline offers an answer that goes through the process of getting Ready Player One from book to screen, working with Spielberg and fellow writer Penn, as well as detailing why some of the changes were made. The answer amounts to just under a thousand words.

Turns out, the book rights and film rights were both sold within 48 hours of each other. “There was a bidding war over the book rights in June of 2010, followed the very next day by a bidding war over film rights in Hollywood. Because I started out as a screenwriter, and was part of the screenwriter’s guild, the deal was ‘If you bought the film rights, I had the right to write the first few drafts of the screenplay.’ ”

While that sounds like a dream situation for any writer – particular one whose biggest credit before their debut book was the not-particularly well-received screenplay for Fanboys – Cline was rushed off his feet. Due to the fast nature of deal, the author had to complete a screenplay before the rights were sold and way before the book was published. “I couldn’t point to it being a bestseller, let alone an international best seller, so I didn’t have much leverage to maintain the integrity of my story when I was working on it,” he says.

“I felt like they were forcing me to take it further and further away from my book. I knew that there would be changes – I knew the whole time I was writing the book that could never be a movie because of all the licensing rights. So I knew aspects would have to be reworked. But I wanted to rework those set pieces in a way that would be true to the spirit of my book.”

Almost by magic, the screenplay eventually fell into the hands of the only director Cline could imagine being able to handle the story: Steven Spielberg. “If the script had found its way to any other filmmaker then it probably would have never gotten made,” Cline says. Spielberg came and met Cline holding a copy of Ready Player One filled with post-it notes and highlighted paragraphs, everything the filmmaker wanted to take from the book into the movie. Unsurprisingly, from that point on (three years ago this month) the author was no longer worried, but excited, helped further by Spielberg’s history with book adaptations, including The Colour Purple, Jurassic Park, Lincoln, and – perhaps most famously – Jaws.

“Spielberg was just the best collaborator I’ve ever had. He took my input all the way through pre-production,” Cline continues, waxing lyrical about working with one of his heroes. “He took my input all the way through pre-production, having me visit the set many times, meeting each individual department. There are things in my book that are in the movie that were never in any draft of my script because he had everybody referring to my book.”

Examples include the villains base, the IOI loyalty centre. “There are these coffin hotels that were never mentioned in any script but are in the book,” he says. “And when you first meet Ache in the real world, she’s wearing the exact same outfit she’s wearing in the book, because the costume designer had the book. That’s what should happen to every novelist.”

There were still changes. Finally, we return to my question. “People always ask me ‘Are you happy with the changed that had to be made?’ And I am, because I helped make all those changes. Coming up with the new second challenge was the most fun I’ve ever had collaborating with anyone!”

Ready Player One centres on the character Wade Watts/Parzival attempting to find three digital keys in the OASIS, each planted by the creator of the OASIS, the now deceased Willy Wonka-type character James Halliday. Whoever manages to find all three keys – and they’re all hidden behind deceptively difficultly challenges – becomes the new owner of the OASIS. The biggest change between the book and film is the aforementioned second challenge. What Cline, Penn, and Spielberg have cooked up is a wonderful homage to a very famous Eighties horror movie which (although myself and Cline spoke about it) I won’t spoil here. The gist of what the author says, though, is that Spielberg adored working on the sequence with his cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, paying homage to the wonderful film.

“I’m just really happy with how it turned out,” Cline concludes. “I feel like it captures the spirit of my book. The movie as a whole tells a much denser story in two-and-a-half hours, in an abbreviated way that takes you on a rollercoaster ride.”

While the book may have been a best seller, some people have found issues with the writing online, taking issue with the portrayal of female characters or overuse of pop-culture references. Before the film’s release, for instance, Vox ran an article titled “The Ready Player One backlash, explained”. So, would Cline change anything about the novel with the 2018 foresight?

“No,” he says. “The book is my first novel. Everything you could ever want to happen after you publish your first novel has happened to me. I cannot think of anything else. I wouldn’t change a word of Ready Player One, because any change may result in none of that happening. It’s not a perfect book but it was the best I could do at that moment. Like any work of art, it’s of its time and I wouldn’t mess with it.”

For the sequel, Cline hopes to take everything he has learnt and build a new adventure within the OASIS: “So much of the work of Ready Player One was world building. Now that I have that, it’s the ultimate playground. Magic, technology, lasers, spell casting, all happening at once in the OASIS. I always wanted to tell more stories in that world.”

The OASIS, I say, is the ultimate playground for storytelling, where you can do anything. “Or be anyone, or have anything. It’s unconstrained by the rules of reality. The OASIS is the evolution of video games. Once you log into a video game and you’re inside it, and there’s no distinction from reality, where else is there to go? From playing Pong, a two demential version of tennis, to playing in the OASIS where it feels no different to playing real tennis. That’s where video games are heading and that’s where they will stop evolving. Because there really is nowhere else for games to go.”

Time to invest in those virtual reality companies, I think.

Ready Player One is in cinemas now