No 'Star Wars' Easter Egg for 'Ready Player One,' But What About 'Firefly'?

Wade Watts might get to fly the DeLorean from Back to the Future, but don’t expect him to climb in the cockpit of an X-Wing or the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. According to director Steven Spielberg, Ready Player One will not contain Star Wars references, despite his best efforts.

According to Joblo, at a press conference on Thursday for Ready Player One, Speilberg said: “We couldn’t get any Star Wars rights…they wouldn’t give up the Star Wars rights.”

For fans of the book, this means we probably won’t see any X-Wings flying around in the Oasis, or R2-D2 as the DJ of a giant dance party. On some level, that makes sense. An actual Star Wars movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story, is coming out just a few months after Ready Player One, so it stands to reason Disney wouldn’t want competition in the cool spaceship department. Can you imagine if there were two versions of Millennium Falcon in movie theaters at the same time?

The absence of any Star Wars references does beg the question of which spaceships we’ll see from other sci-fi franchises in the film version of Ready Player One. In the book, Wade has a Firefly-class spaceship — from the show Firefly — which he renames the Vonnegut after he obtains it. Obviously, this is a double reference not only to Firefly, but to beloved author Kurt Vonnegut, too. Will the dearth of Star Wars references allow this cult double-whammy easter egg to surface in the film?

Speaking at SXSW, the screenwriter for Ready Player One, Zak Penn, said: “The one biggest spoiler I can’t tell you. You’ll find out eventually. But that’s my favorite part.”

He seemed to indicate this spoiler would be another pop-culture touchstone. But now, based on Spielberg’s latest comments, it won’t be from Star Wars.

In other Ready Player One news, a new trailer was released on Thursday, which features King Kong and the Eighties hit from a-Ha, “Take On Me.” Watch it here.