‘Ready Player One’ Reunites Simon Pegg & Steven Spielberg

With production scheduled to begin this June, the cast is starting to fill out for Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One. The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Simon Pegg is in talks to star in the adaptation ofErnest Cline's novel as Orgen Morrow, the co-creator of a virtual gamingworld known as Oasis. The adaptation was originally set to hit theaters next December, but it was pushed into 2018 last month, to avoid competing with Star Wars: Episode VIII.

If a deal is finalized, Simon Peggwill join a cast that includes Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke and Ben Mendelsohn. Ready Player Onecenters on a teenager named Wade Watts, who becomes obsessed with a virtual reality world known as Oasis, that allows players to live out their fantasies. After the game's creator suddenly dies, an elaborate treasure hunt is held within the Oasis world, with the winner emerging to take control of the entire company.

Along with gamers from around the world, Wade joins the adventure, and quickly finds himself pitted against powerful corporate foes and other ruthless competitors who will do anything, in the oasis or the real world, to reach the treasure first. Olivia Cooke will play Sam, a Canadian blogger who is known in the Oasis world as Art3mis, and will become alove interest for the lead character. Ben Mendelsohn is playing the executive of an Internet company who is trying to take control of Oasis.

Steven Spielberg is directing Ready Player One from a screenplay by Zak Penn (Marvel's The Avengers), with the director also producing alongsideDonald De Line, Dan Farah and Kristie Macosko Krieger. The project will be the filmmaker's first at Warner Bros. since 2001's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. The adaptation currently doesn't have any direct competition in its March 30, 2018 release date.

This project reunites Simon Pegg with Steven Spielberg after they both worked together on the 2011 adventure The Adventures of Tintin. Simon Pegg most recently starred in the action blockbuster Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation and the comedy Absolutely Anything, along with an unrecognizable role as Unkar Plutt in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He reprises his role as the iconic Scotty in this summer's Star Trek Beyond, which he also co-wrote the script for alongside Doug Jung. Do you thinkSimon Pegg is the perfect actor to portray Orgen Morrow in Ready Player One?