Dec 12, 2017

Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One" is filled with animated characters.

Besides being one of 2018's most hotly anticipated geek films, Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is also shaping up as one of its most technically ambitious.

The film takes place largely in a virtual reality landscape called the Oasis, which is populated by virtual avatars. Spielberg used motion capture animation techniques to create those avatar characters, and we get a peek at what those characters look like in the film's latest trailer:

Based on Ernest Cline's bestselling 2011 novel of the same name, the heavily-vfx hybrid film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse:

The film has plenty of other animated characters as well, since the virtual Oasis is cluttered with the detritus of American pop culture. CGI versions of King Kong, Chucky, Lara Croft, and Street Fighter's Chun-Li pop up in this new trailer, along with a bevy of other film, tv, and video game characters that were popular during the second part of the last century, and the first part of this one.

ILM is the lead vfx house on the film, supported by Digital Domain and Territory.

Ready Player One will be released in U.S. theaters by Warner Bros. on March 30, 2018.