‘Ready Player One’ Author Ernie Cline Writing New Sci-Fi Book

Ernest Cline is riding high. This is Cline’s third book (after this summer’sArmada) and likely will be the third on its way to the big screen as this week they will open up conversations to sell film rights. The sci-fi novelist behind Ready Player One, which Steven Spielberg will helm for Warner Bros, just made another whopping deal with Crown Publishing (a division of Penguin Random House) which we’re hearing is a mid seven-figure pact for his next yarn – and that’s for U.S. rights only. Crown printed Cline’s two previous books as well. The untitled story is being kept under wraps, but it is yet another sci-fi project from the fledgling author who has gained traction since Spielberg signed on to direct Ready Player One in May. According to Deadline, the film rights will be shopped starting this week.

All the secrecy mixed with all the attention means that Cline is poised to become “a thing”. It won several awards, was a bestseller, and is now being adapted into a film by none other than Steven Spielberg.

Armada was released in July and debuted at No. 4 on the New York Times best-seller list.

Ready Player One follows a boy who is plugged into a utopian virtual reality world and has the opportunity to control the world if he can unlock an Easter egg with 80’s pop culture references.

The movie is set to be a co-production between Warner Bros, Village Roadshow Pictures and DreamWorks, and a release date has now been confirmed for the movie as well. Scott Stuber is producing, and Cline will serve as co-producer. (Yes, this was also the basic premise of Pixels, the completely unrelated Adam Sandler stinker.) No director or screenwriter has been announced as of yet.

For his grand return to science fiction, the genre that cemented his reputation in the 1980s, Spielberg is once again drawing his inspiration from literature, as he does every time he makes a film in this genre. Not too shabby for a guy who was previously best known in Hollywood for scripting Fanboys, a lumpy labor of love best known for its many behind-the-scenes woes.