Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is looking to come out of the Easter weekend the victor with a projected $42 million at the US box office.
Now that Black Panther is finally slowing down at the box office, other movies are starting to come into the frame. Once such feature is Ready Player One, the latest effort by legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
Ready Player One has received an 84% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is on track to bring in between $38 and $42 million at the domestic box office over the four day weekend.
The film has been put together on a hefty budget of between $150 million and $175 million with the latest forecasts for its opening down slightly from earlier estimates of $45 million to $55 million.
Ready Player One should handily beat Pacific Rim Uprising and Black Panther this weekend, which will both be battling it out for second place.
Spielberg’s latest will also be released simultaneously around the world in 62 different markets.
SEE ALSO: Read our review of Ready Player One
Ready Player One is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.
Ready Player One is set for release on March 30th, 2018 and sees Steven Spielberg (The BFG) directing a cast that includes Tye Sheridan (X-Men: Apocalypse) as Parzival, Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) as Art3mis, Lena Waithe (Master of Nine) as Aech, Simon Pegg (Star Trek Beyond) as Ogden Morrow, Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) as Nolan Sorrento, T.J. Miller (Deadpool) as i-R0k, Hannah John-Kamen (Game of Thrones) as F’Nale Zandor, Win Morisaki as Diato, newcomer Philip Zhao as Shoto and Mark Rylance (The BFG) as James Halliday.