Ernest Cline, the author of the hit 2011 novel Ready Player One, is partnering with Futureverse to form a new company, Readyverse, that aims to bring Ready Player One and other popular IP into its own digital universe.
According to an announcement from Readyverse this week (via THR), the company will look to use AI and the metaverse to create its own digital universe.
Similar to the premise of Ready Player One, the company hopes that IP from all over the world will be able to come together in some form, and teased that they already have had discussions with other companies. Despite Ready Player One being set in a dystopian world, Futureverse and Readyverse Studios co-founder Shara Senderoff has much brighter hopes for their company.
“Ernie in the wildest way, I mean, he mapped this out and he mapped it out with a real focus on openness at heart,” Futureverse and Readyverse Studios co-founder Shara Senderoff told The Hollywood Reporter. “Obviously the movie opens in a dystopian stacks world which was the catalyst of the movie itself, but Ernie’s view is all about the openness of the technology. And he has a fundamental understanding of how these things needed to work.”
Readyverse Studios has been in talks with other studios for IP partnerships
In its announcement, Readyverse Studios says that it holds the rights to all of Cline’s other novels as well as any future works. The company also said it has begun having quiet conversations with other “major studios and significant rights holders of beloved IP” to try and get them involved in their metaverse, including Warner Bros. Discovery.
“We’ve already been begun conversations quietly with a few major studios and significant rights holders of beloved IP and they’re all leaning into figuring out collaborations with us,” Farah says. “Everyone’s really excited about this being the way to bring their IP to the metaverse.”
“The Warner team has been super excited and supportive, and I think that the Ready Player One franchise rights will be the first of many IP rights deals we do with Warner,” Farah adds.
