Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is a big hit at the box office, and a lot of its success is thanks to Ernest Cline (pictured above with Spielberg). He wrote the 2011 novel the movie is based on and also collaborated on the screenplay with Zak Penn. Now he's about to be a big deal in Hollywood. First up for his rise in notoriety: another adaptation of one of his books, according to Deadline, this time Armada.
That would be Cline's sophomore publication, published in 2015. It's about a high school kid who is recruited into a real-life version of his favorite video game and has to defend Earth in an intergalactic space war. Yes, that does sound like the plot of the 1984 movie The Last Starfighter, but that's okay because Cline's novel actually references that as an inspiration.
Armada is actually filled with pop culture references, though not quite as many as the Easter egg-filled Ready Player One. Two other movies with related stories name checked include Flight of the Navigator and Ender's Game. And, of course, there's Star Wars, which is also the same thing minus the video game part, if you think about it.
Cline wrote the first draft of the Armada screenplay while still writing the novel (and while writing the Ready Player One script), because Universal bought the rights back in 2012 when it was just an idea. Now the screenplay is being rewritten by Dan Mazeau (Wrath of the Titans), and Ready Player One producer Dan Farah is involved with this, as well, alongside Dylan Clark (the Planet of the Apes reboot).
Farah is also producing another movie based on one of Cline's novels, but that book is yet to be published and is said to be top secret until it is. Cline only has the two novels finished so far. In addition to the secret third book, he's also expected to author a Ready Player One sequel. Given how well he seems to multitask projects, we can hope all of these plans are fulfilled rather quickly.
