A sizeable chunk of Ready Player One takes place in live-action, but that might not stop it from breaking into the Animation category at the 2019 Academy Awards.
The latest action-adventure movie from director Steven Spielberg is rooted in live-action scenes depicting a post-apocalyptic world where Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) lives a pretty pitiful existence.
His only escape is through the medium of Virtual Reality, where he can explore a CGI world where he encounters classic movie characters and meets the girl of his dreams (Olivia Cooke).
Because so much of the movie takes place in this CGI world, called the OASIS, Spielberg and Warner Bros may be able to legitimately submit it for Best Animated Picture when awards season rolls around.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that the Academy's by-laws only classify an animated film as "a motion picture in which movement and characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, and usually falls into one of the two general fields of animation: narrative or abstract.
"Some of the techniques for animating films include but are not limited to hand-drawn animation, computer animation, stop-motion, clay animation, pixilation, cutout animation, pinscreen, camera multiple pass imagery, kaleidoscopic effects created frame-by-frame and drawing on the film frame itself."
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Nominated films must also feature animation in "no less than 75%" of its total running time, a standard that Ready Player One may well meet since CGI was used extensively even in the live-action scenes. On the flipside, the by-laws also require films made "in a cinematic style that could be mistaken for live-action" to offer specific evidence about what makes them animated.
There's no word yet on if Warner Bros will actually go the animation route when submitting Ready Player One for Academy Awards contention, but it's an intriguing possibility.
Ready Player One is now playing in US and UK cinemas. Watch a trailer below:
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Justin is a freelance entertainment journalist and writer. He first joined Digital Spy as a freelance entertainment reporter in 2010 and also worked as a sub-editor for the brand, serving as Night News Editor from 2016 to 2024. Over more than a decade, Justin has covered numerous major entertainment events from the US and has interviewed a wide-ranging group of public figures, from comedian Steve Coogan to icons from the Star Trek universe, cast members from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and reality stars from numerous Real Housewives cities and the Below Deck franchise. Justin has also been on the ground to cover major pop culture events like the Star Wars Celebration and the D23 Expo. He's written for titles across the Hearst network, plus the likes of CBR and Us Weekly.
