Olivia Cooke Set to Star in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Ready Player One’

Though Me and Earl and the Dying Girl may not have been the sleeper hit that Fox Searchlight hoped for this summer, it at least has propelled its lead actress to stardom. Fresh of that Sundance hit, Olivia Cooke has been cast as one of two leads in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming sci-fi adventure Ready Player One.

Spielberg had been meeting with young actors in both New York and Los Angeles hoping to find his male and female leads, but sparked almost immediately to Cooke who beat out more established actresses like Elle Fanning. She’ll star in the film as a Canadian blogger named Sam who is competing with the film’s lead, Wade Watts, to find a treasure left behind by an exotic billionaire in a virtual world called OASIS. While Spielberg hasn’t found his Wade yet, early reports indicate that Jurassic World star Nick Robinson is an early favorite.

Cooke got her start stateside on A&E’s Bates Motel while later starring in the teen horror film, Ouija. She had been rumored to be on the shortlist for Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: Episode 8 though her involvement in Ready Player One would seem to preclude heading to a galaxy far, far away.

The question now is whether Ready Player One will actually happen. Spielberg is notoriously fickle when it comes to his directorial efforts, frequently getting far along in the process before eventually walking away. In recent memory he walked away from both American Sniper and Robopocalypse, which had Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway set to star before eventually falling apart.

Ready Player One is set to open on December 15, 2017.