'Ready Player One': T.J. Miller Explains His Role in Steven Spielberg's Videogame Adventure
After stealing his scenes in Deadpool and headlining Office Christmas Party, T.J. Miller is returning to theaters this July 28 in The Emoji Movie, voicing the main character “Meh” (a yellow emoji whose name indicates his primary attitude). He has an even bigger project after that — Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ready Player One, a fantasy rooted in a world created from bits and pieces of various ’80s videogames. Now, in a new interview with Fandango, he spills the first secrets about the closely guarded adventure.
Miller reveals to Fandango he got his Office Christmas Party part thanks to Spielberg, who wanted to see if the 35-year-old actor could handle headlining duties. Apparently, the director was impressed, since he subsequently cast him in a Ready Player One role that wasn’t in Ernest Cline’s novel:
“I’m not in the book. Some plot points are different, but I’m the only new character. I play i-R0k and basically I am a funny, or at least mildly amusing, Boba Fett. In the OASIS, I am a better player than Aech or Daito or any of those guys. I am sort of unequivocally the best bounty hunter, but I work freelance. While all the Sixers work for IOI and Sorrento, he has to commission me and I get an incredibly high fee to either find people and kill them or make them starve in the game.
“My character in the movie wants to be Boba Fett. Like that’s his hero, his idol, which isn’t far off for many Star Wars fans, myself included.”
Miller is also convinced that the movie will resemble nothing else that moviegoers have ever seen on a big screen:
“While I’m positive that acting will be good and I like all the people he got — even though they’re younger kids — nothing in the world will have ever looked like this. Basically, it looks like a video game when not in the real world. And because it’s Steven Spielberg, it looks better than any video game on the market. Because of his access and resources, Gears of War and f***ing Call of Duty can’t even touch it. I think they’re inventing new technology for it. So, yeah, I’m excited for 2018.”
From the sounds of it, Spielberg is in his element with Ready Player One, which co-stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance, and Simon Pegg, and which is scheduled for release on March 30, 2018.
T.J. Miller in ‘Office Christmas Party’: Watch a trailer:
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