On a purely commercial level, Steven Spielberg is the single most successful director of all-time, and the only filmmaker to have seen their back catalogue earn a combined total of over $10 billion at the box office. The bearded one’s last movie was hardly among his very best, but it was nonetheless a massive success that already feels as though it’s been completely forgotten about, despite only being released two years ago.
Ready Player One was a lavish $175 million adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel, which was itself a love letter to pop culture. Spielberg always seemed like an unusual choice to helm the big screen version given that the source material was so heavily indebted to his own work, but the Jaws and Jurassic Park director jettisoned most of the references to his past movies and focused on delivering a stylish and propulsive adventure instead.
Ready Player One was enthusiastically received by critics and currently holds a solid 72% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while it tuned out to be a huge box office smash after going on to earn over $580 million globally, enough to make it the sixth biggest hit of the director’s entire career. Based on those numbers, a sequel felt like an inevitability, especially when Cline revealed he was working on a second book.
Sure enough, Ready Player Two was published last month and in a recent interview, the author’s now admitted that the movie is already in active development.
“It’s in the early stages right now, especially since Hollywood is in limbo right now. But I can tell from the experience of making the first movie that everybody had a lot of fun.”
There’s no word on whether or not Spielberg will return given that he’s not particularly big on sequels, but based on how successful Ready Player One ended up being, there’s going to be no shortage of directors willing to step in and take the reins if he declines the opportunity.