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| Ready Player One is buzz-worthy |
SXSW is a major festival used by studios to generate buzz about movies set to come out in the near future, with Ready Player One getting its world premiere there last night. So far it's besting the social media buzz that Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver received last year, as it went on to initially garner a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score on its way to earning $107.8 million domestically and $226.9 million globally. It also ended up with three Oscar nominations.
Warner Bros. chose to bring Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One to Austin not just because of the festival's stature, but also because Texas is the home of the movie’s author and co-screenwriter Ernest Cline and star Tye Sheridan.
RelishMix reported that Baby Driver's world premiere at SXSW last year, saw #BabyDriver hashtags jump to 3,700 in the 24-hour period following the film's premiere. #ReadyPlayerOne did even better. The film's hashtags were averaging between 250 to 2,500 each day in the week before the premiere. Since last nights premiere at the Paramount theater, its hashtags have increased to an outstanding 19,300.
Spredfast Social Analytics is reporting a Twitter increase for Ready Player One of +94% with a reach of 106 million people from close to 10,000 posts following the premiere, with #ReadyPlayerOne and #StevenSpielberg trending. Rober Rodriguez also posted his support of the film on Twitter.
#ReadyPlayerOne is classic Spielberg fun! What a blast, can't wait to see it again. Rewards repeat viewings. Tons of great references, visuals and heart. So kick ass it blew the speakers!— Robert Rodriguez (@Rodriguez) March 12, 2018
So far it currently has a 75% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score from 15 reviews, with journalists singing its praise on Twitter and Instagram. The film is currently expected to earn somewhere between $36 to 42$ million on its opening weekend, and possibly as much as $66 million-plus.
The film is being adapted from the 2010 novel of the same name, written by Ernest Cline. The book was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2012 Prometheus Award.The cast also includes Tye Sheridan, Mark Rylance, Olivia Cooke, Simon Pegg, T.J. Miller, Ben Mendelsohn, Win Morisaki, Philip Zhao, and Hannah John-Kamen. It is scheduled to be released on March 30, 2018.
"When the creator of an MMO called the Oasis dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all Oasis users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune. Wade Watts finds the first clue and starts a race for the Egg."