According to Harry Knowles over at Aint It Cool News, a book written by Fanboys screenwriter Ernest Cline that was just bought by Random House for six figures has now been optioned by Warners. I haven’t read the book because it’s not on shelves yet, but Harry has and he’s claiming the adaptation will be “the geekiest film ever made.”
Given the sliding scale of hyperbole, that realistically means that the film has a chance of being moderately to very geeky. Given the references all crammed into the Fanboys script, that seems likely.
According to Digital Spy, the book
…centers on a teenage boy named Wade Watts who enters a virtual world called Oasis to escape his bleak environment. Wade goes on a treasure hunt in the virtual space and competes against a batch of dangerous foes.
Granted, just about anything that involves a young kid entering a computerized world will sound like Tron, but without any other information, that’s what I’m going with. However, the treasure hunt sounds delightful.
One note of interest is that Harry mentioned a decent amount of Warners references within the book – meaning that the studio picking it up will allow for free use of all of them. I can only guess that Bugs Bunny, Harry Potter and Virginia Woolf are all side characters.
On a serious note, Donald De Line is going to be behind this project, and that guy is golden as far as producing goes. He also has (had) a portrait of himself hanging in the lobby outside his office that I absolutely never threw a cup of coffee at.
Sound good?