Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One Casts Simon Pegg - Report

Steven Spielberg's sci-fi movie Ready Player One, based on the Ernest Cline book about virtual reality and video games, has added Simon Pegg to its cast. This is according to a report today from Variety, which also revealed the character Pegg will play.

Pegg will reportedly play Orgen Morrow, the co-creator of Oasis, which is the virtual reality that Ready Player One characters tap into and find preferable to the real world.

The film's already-confirmed cast includes Bloodline's Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), and Tye Sheridan (Mud). Mendelsohn will reportedly play the villain while Sheridan takes on the role of the teenager at the heart of the story. Cooke's role has not yet been divulged.

Pegg's latest major movie was Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. His next big film is this July's Star Trek Beyond, which he co-wrote and portrays Scotty in.

X-Men writer Zak Penn wrote the most recent script for the Ready Player One movie, though it remains to be seen how closely the film follows the book's story. Penn and Cline also worked together on another video game movie, last year's Atari: Game Over.

Ready Player One was originally scheduled to debut on December 15, 2017, but after Disney moved Star Wars Episode VIII to that date, Warner Bros. pushed Ready Player One to March 2018.