A dystopian novel about hunting for Goonies-style treasure in a MMORPG is pretty much begging to be made into a movie, but it’s taken years to get a film adaptation of Ready Player One off the ground. Warner Brothers has taken another step with the project today, however, by announcing that the script will be penned by… Zak Penn. Get it? Ehh? See what I did there? Okay, so he’s rewriting it, but that’s not nearly punny enough. Erm, funny. OH NO I CAN’T STOP.
Anyway, Penn’s previous credits include X-Men 2, the story for the The Avengers, and the TV show Alphas. They also include X-Men: The Last Stand and Elektra, but we won’t hold that against him. As we previously reported, he’s also currently helping Guillermo Del Toro to write the “very different” script for Pacific Rim 2.
This seems like a good decision for the project’s future, as Penn and Ready Player One author Ernest Cline (who also wrote the script for Fanboys and who is currently working on a show called Geek Out! for AMC) have recently become friends in real life and will probably work well together in a professional setting. Apparently they bonded during their combined efforts to unearth those Atari E.T. cartridges that were buried in a New Mexico landfill–I hear that’s a great way to meet people. Those cartridges are now things you can actually purchase, by the way. Presumably if the radioactive 8-bit ghost of E.T. comes in the night to steal your soul, you can sue the two writers for damages or something.
Either way, this is certainly good for fans of the 2011 novel who’ve been waiting for any kind of news about the film adaption. Just as long as the audiobook reader gets some kind of a speaking part. You know, because he’s Wil Wheaton. Who doesn’t want to see Wil Wheaton in a movie about dystopian near-future video games? Take note, Zak Penn. Take a whole bunch of notes.
(via Collider)
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