Ready Player One: The Quest for IP.

Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg, is based on a dystopian novel by Ernest Cline. Cline also contributed to the screenplay. The events of the novel set in the near future center around a pervasive virtual reality landscape called The Oasis. It is basically an ARG on steroids where people, through the use of goggles and haptic gear, escape the bleakness of society to live out their days in a fantasy realm. The creator of The Oasis, on his death, creates an Adventure style hunt with the prize being full control of The Oasis. Many parties, including the ruthless corporate antagonist IOI, race to take control for their own nefarious designs.
In order to solve the riddles placed in the game by the creator, players have to be intimately familiar with 70’s and 80’s pop culture references. While the novel is ambitious in incorporating these properties, a regular film maker would find insurmountable barriers in securing the many licenses required. Only one man has the Hollywood clout to pull off such a win; Steven Spielberg. But even he struggled to get other studios to buy-in. A job made even more difficult with his unfortunate decision not to include his own many properties that were the focus of the novel. This isn’t Spielberg’s first trip to the licensing rodeo. As producer of the Touchstone Pictures animated classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Spielberg used his substantial clout to secure licenses for characters from Betty Boop to Bugs Bunny. Since Touchstone was an arm of The Walt Disney Company, securing Mickey Mouse and friends was a non-issue.

Fast forward to 2015. Spielberg decides to direct the screen adaptation of Ready Player One. He and his team set out to secure properties integral to the story, and have relative success with all except one; Star Wars. Arguably the biggest pop culture influence in the last two centuries, Star Wars figures heavly in Cline’s novel. Since Spielberg worked his magic so well for Disney on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and to add that he recently directed the modestly successful BFG film for Disney, one would assume that the studio would cooperate. In an interview, he stated that they weren’t able to get the ok to use Star Wars from the Mouse House. Ironically, Disney itself had a similarly frustrating experience getting IP for the many video game characters featured in Wreck It Ralph, and were unable to convince Nintendo to allow the use of a certain Italian Plumber. In spite of these experiences and their history with Spielberg, Disney was being stingy with Star Wars.  However, at some point after the interview was published, Spielberg reported that Disney relented, presumably to avoid more fan backlash than the Studio was already facing from The Last Jedi. The Star Wars references in the film are little more than brief flashes of R2-D2 and an X-Wing Fighter. In a possible jab at Disney, the script features a scene where an IOI bigwig dangles the Millennium Falcon as a carrot to entice a player to give up the solution to a puzzle. The player responds with genuine disbelief that getting the ship would be possible. Here’s to hoping for more inter-studio cooperation in future films.