At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, we had a chance to check out the first footage of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film, Ready Player One. The movie is based on the Ernest Cline novel of the same name, and is poised to be a big hit upon its release. Not only is this a big budget, tentpole film based on a hit book, but it’s also something of a pop culture cornucopia. The novel was a love letter to the 1980s, and based on the trailer, it seems like they will be continuing the pop culture references through the 1990s and 2000s — as evidenced by the likes of the Iron Giant and Master Chief.

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Of course, as with all big movies, those won’t be the only changes made to this adaptation. Since novels are a different medium from film, there’s bound to be some big differences, though it’s sometimes hard to know what these differences will be. However, in a new image released by Empire, we may have our first indication of one big change. In it, we see Tye Sheridan’s Wade Watts  and Olivia Cooke’s Art3mis (real name Samantha Evelyn Cook), two big players in the scavenger hunt that makes up the film.

TAKE A LOOK AT THE IMAGE HERE

So what’s the big change here? In the novel, Wade and Art3mis don’t meet until near the very end, and there’s a great deal of build-up to it, as the pair had become romantically entangled while playing online. Here, it looks like they’ll be meeting in real life at a much earlier stage in the film, as their surroundings look very different from where they met in the novel (readers of the book will understand what I mean). This change can lead to inferences regarding other big changes in the film.

While I have little to back this up, this scene will likely take place around halfway through the film, and as such, we can infer that the film will take advantage of the real world. In the book, most everything takes place online, but in a medium where seeing your actual heroes is a big deal, it’s understandable why they’d opt to introduce them physically sooner rather than later. If they chose to see our leads under different circumstances, about halfway seems like a good point in which to do so.

Does this change concern you? Let us know in the comments down below!

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SOURCE: Empire