Back in 2010 when Ernie Cline finished writing his young adult sci-fi novel Ready Player One, it sparked a Hollywood bidding war among several studios. Warner Brothers ended up winning the rights in a six-figure deal, but now four years later, the movie does not seem to be any closer to actually getting made. Cline is no stranger to having projects stuck in development hell (the movie based on his first script, Fanboys, was badly mishandled by The Weinstein Company), but with Ready Player One there is another big problem: the story references tons of ’80s video games, movies and other copyrighted material. Screenwriter Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk) recently did a rewrite on the script and he offered the following update on the project:

“I took some huge liberties in the script. Not as many in the book. If you had to license the stuff in the book, it would cost a billion dollars. You write a script, you take your chances, you say, ‘This is what we’re going to do. This is where we’re going to take cars and scenes from these movies and these properties, and then you hope that you’ll get the rights to it, but we’re not at that point yet. I just finished the script. When you start getting into production and casting, that’s when you would start going through and saying, ‘Okay, can we get the rights to Donkey Kong?’ or what have you. It’s very different in a film like that than it is in a documentary where you can just declare fair use and do it.”

Penn, of course, just directed the documentary Atari: Game Over, which Cline also appears in, so it would seem that they bonded over their love of old video games. Having just read the book, I am actually in the minority where I think a lot of the ’80s pop culture pandering actually cheapens the book and I would be fine with seeing just generic video games in their place. On the other hand, I understand that this is one of the selling points of the book (and the movie) so I can’t see them doing it without those elements. Are you still holding out hope for a Ready Player One movie? Would you be interested even if they can’t get the licensing rights?