The film was co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Cline and Zak Penn, and stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg and Mark Rylance.

A teenage orphan finds clues to a contest that promises ownership of the OASIS to the winner, and he and his allies try to complete it before an evil corporation can do so.

The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised Spielberg's direction, the visual effects, brisk pacing, and the performances of both Sheridan and Rylance.

After Halliday's death, a pre-recorded message left by his avatar Anorak announces a contest, granting ownership of the OASIS to the first to find the golden Easter egg within it, which is, however, locked behind a gate requiring three keys which players can obtain by accomplishing three challenges.

Sorrento asks mercenary i-R0k to learn Wade's true identity, intending to bribe him to win the contest on IOI's behalf.

Sorrento's subordinate F'Nale Zandor storms the Gunters' hideout and captures Samantha to pay off her father's debt.

The third challenge is found in Castle Anorak on Planet Doom, where players must guess Halliday's favorite Atari 2600 game to earn the Crystal Key.

As the IOI Loyalty Centers are shut down, the High Five make the controversial choice to close the OASIS every Tuesday and Thursday for people to spend more time in the real world, including Wade and Samantha, who start a relationship and move into an apartment.

Lulu Wilson, Letitia Wright, Mckenna Grace, and Jane Douglas of YouTube group OutsideXbox make cameo appearances in the film, with Wright as a rebel who can be seen at Samantha's safe house, Grace and Wilson as students using the OASIS when Halliday's pre-recorded will was shown, and Douglas as a Sixer.

[24][25][26] Warner Bros. bought the film rights for producers Dan Farah and Donald De Line in June 2010, one year before the book was published.

[31] Afterwards the studio made a shortlist of potential directors including Robert Zemeckis, Edgar Wright, Matthew Vaughn, and Peter Jackson.

Most of these changes were to eliminate scenes that would be uninteresting in a visual format, such as when Wade beats a high score in Pac-Man, or recites all the lines from the film WarGames.

Ludgate Hill Car Park on Lionel Street, in which caravan homes were partially built, was also used, and a planned explosion there caused some local businesses and residents to call emergency services as no prior notice was given by the production team.

[46][47] Outside of Birmingham, filming also took place at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden and at Solaris House, the former Sun Microsystems headquarters in Surrey.

[49][50] Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Digital Domain, and Territory Studio developed the visual effects, with some pre-visualization work done by The Third Floor.

[51][52] For three hours three days a week, Spielberg met with ILM, which was in charge of the OASIS segments and produced the bulk of the visual effects shots, with 900 in total; Spielberg remarked that "this is the most difficult movie I've done since Saving Private Ryan", as three 3-hour long meetings a week were necessitated to discuss the visual effects.

Only a few scenes involved real actors (such as the appearance of the Grady twins) and required reproduction of The Shining's physical sets.

[56] Digital Domain facilitated pre-visualization (with The Third Floor), motion capture, and virtual sets, and also created 300 visual effects shots for the primarily live-action portions of the film.

[60] At Spielberg's request, Silvestri references his own music from Back to the Future within the film's score, as well as quoting music by other composers, including Max Steiner's theme from King Kong, Akira Ifukube’s main theme from Godzilla, and the score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind from The Shining.

[61][62] Ready Player One pays homage to popular culture from various time periods, mainly the 1970s and 1980s but also extending to the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s; reviewers have identified over a hundred references to films, television shows, music, toys, video games, anime, and comics from these eras.

[63][64][65] Cline did not have any issues with these copyrighted elements when he published the book, but was aware that securing all necessary rights would be a major obstacle for a film adaptation.

[69] Similarly Blade Runner, which was integral to the plot of the book, was shelved as Blade Runner 2049 was in production at the same time as Ready Player One and the producers at Alcon Entertainment feared that Spielberg's film could damage the commercial prospects of their film; as a replacement, the creative team had the players play through the events of The Shining, to which Spielberg was able to secure the rights, as an homage to his friend Stanley Kubrick.

[71] Spielberg recognized that his past films were a significant part of the 1980s popular culture cited in the book, and to avoid being accused of "vanity", he opted to remove many of the references to his own work.

[80] The film debuted at the top of the NPD VideoScan First Alert chart, a tracker of combined domestic Blu-Ray and DVD unit sales, for the week ending on July 27, 2018.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Ready Player One is a sweetly nostalgic thrill ride that neatly encapsulates Spielberg's strengths while adding another solidly engrossing adventure to his filmography.

[83] In a review for RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico wrote that the film's "overwhelming" nature and non-stop action will likely thrill fans of pop culture; while he observed narrative weaknesses, such as a lack of depth among the supporting characters, he felt that they ultimately do not hinder the film from working "on the level of technical, blockbuster mastery that Spielberg helped define".

[89] Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman called the film a "coruscating explosion of pop-culture eye candy" and found the sequence based on The Shining to be "irresistible".

[90] IndieWire's Eric Kohn characterized the film as "an astonishing sci-fi spectacle and a relentless nostalgia trip at once" and praised both the sequence based on The Shining and Penn's screenplay, particularly with respect to Mendelsohn's character.

She also commented on just how dystopian the future portrayed is, where the main characters fight to save the OASIS and the escape from reality it represents, with arguably less concern for the problems of the real world.

[109] A promotional video produced by Apple that accompanied the Vision Pro's announcement also mirrored a scene in Ready Player One in which Wade Watts uses his headset to enter the OASIS.