Olivia Cooke has signed on to play the female lead in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One, and now it looks like they’ve found their villain.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story‘s Ben Mendelsohn is being eyed to play Nolan Sorento, the leader of IOI who want to control The Oasis and charge users to access it.
Cooke will be playing Art3mius, a gunter on a mission to find The Egg before anyone else. The lead of the movie, Parcival, has yet to be found.
SEE ALSO: Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One set for 2017
It’s the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We’re out of oil. We’ve wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty, and disease are widespread. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything you want to be, where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade is obsessed by the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this alternate reality: OASIS founder James Halliday, who dies with no heir, has promised that control of the OASIS – and his massive fortune – will go to the person who can solve the riddles he has left scattered throughout his creation. For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that the riddles are based in the culture of the late twentieth century. And then Wade stumbles onto the key to the first puzzle.
Ready Player One is still some distance away, set for release on December 15th 2017.
Originally published January 7, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
