Steven Spielberg ranks Ready Player One as his third most challenging film

Steven Spielberg ranks Ready Player One as the third most challenging film he’s made in his award-winning career.

The veteran filmmaker is gearing up to release the sci-fi action film, which is based on Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel of the same name, and is set in a near-future dystopian Earth where people spend most of their time in an interconnection virtual space called the OASIS.

While Spielberg is known for his innovative use of special effects in his films, the director has admitted that combining live-action with complex sets and props proved difficult at times.

“It's the third most difficult I've made after Jaws and Saving Private Ryan,” he told Empire magazine. “I think there is a distinction between a physical challenge, which was both Jaws and Saving Private Ryan, and another kind of challenge, which is trying to do something technologically new that has never been done before… I had to learn how to film like this while I was making a film like this. And that means a lot of trial and error.”

Ready Player One follows the story Wade Watts, as played by Tye Sheridan, and also stars Black Panther's Letitia Wright, Olivia Cooke, T.J. Miller and Mark Rylance. And Spielberg promises that the film will be packed with pop culture references, especially from the 1980s, though there will be very little links to his own films.

“Nobody can dream so big to believe their work could impact the culture. I wouldn't be that presumptuous. But some of my films have entered the popular culture to the extent that I was too embarrassed to reference those movies in Ready Player One. So, some fans might be angry that I've left out a lot of the movies I made in the '80s, but I’ve also included some too, like Back to the Future,” the 71-year-old said.

Ready Player One is due to hit cinemas from 28 March (18).