Steven Spielberg’s nostalgia-filled sci-fi epic
Ready Player One is packed full of references to many of pop culture’s most iconic franchises, bar one most well-known properties of all time:
Star Wars. As Spielberg explained at Ready Player One's recent press conference.
Screen Rant attended the conference, where Steven Spielberg revealed some of the properties that they couldn’t get the rights to,
Star Wars being the big one.
We couldn’t get any Star Wars rights ... They wouldn’t give up the Star Wars rights.
At that point, Ben Mendelsohn joked that Spielberg could’ve asked him for help getting the rights, since he starred in Gareth Edwards’
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story:
You could’ve called me on that one, Steve. I built the Death Star, I’m just saying.
Spielberg also revealed that there were a few other properties that he wasn't able to procure for the film. Spielberg added:
Kristie [Macosko Krieger] spent 3 years with all of the Warner Bros legal people getting the rights to all of them – and we couldn’t get all of them.
"Them" meaning Ultraman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which, ironically, was directed by Spielberg, and probably a couple others. Of course, there’s always the possibility of a sequel (Ernest Cline is currently writing a sequel to the Ready Player One novel), at which point Disney may be more willing to participate. Nevertheless, the movie will still be chock-full of nostalgic references to many other big franchises, just sadly not the biggest.
What do you think of Disney omitting Star Wars from the film? Are you looking forward to Ready Player One?