Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One has enjoyed a healthy debut at the global box office, pulling in $181.3 million worldwide.
Domestically, the pop culture sci-fi grossed $53.2 million across the Thursday to Sunday period to take top spot ahead of Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, and pulled in a further $128 million from international markets, including a hefty $61.7 million in China.
Not accounting for inflation, Ready Player One has given Spielberg his fourth biggest domestic debut after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($100 million in 2008), The Lost World: Jurassic Park ($74 million in 1997), and War of the Worlds ($64 million in 2005), although its Fri-Sun haul of $41.2 million wast bested by 1993’s Jurassic World on $50 million.
Ready Player One is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.
Ready Player One sees Steven Spielberg (The BFG) directing a cast that includes Tye Sheridan (X-Men: Apocalypse) as Parzival, Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) as Art3mis, Simon Pegg (Star Trek Beyond) as Ogden Morrow, Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) as Nolan Sorrento, T.J. Miller (Deadpool) as i-R0k, Hannah John-Kamen (Game of Thrones) as F’Nale Zandor, Win Morisaki as Diato, newcomer Philip Zhao as Shoto and Mark Rylance (The BFG) as James Halliday.
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