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Be excited. Very excited.

What could be better than Steven Spielberg coming to Birmingham to shoot a science fiction thriller?

And turning the Jewellery Quarter into America?

It's 2044 and many people are living in depressing stacks of homes piled high on top of each other.

To escape this grim reality, they enter a virtual reality world called Oasis.

When the creator dies, the first person to solve an Easter Egg puzzle will become the richest man or woman in the world.

Ready Player One will be stuffed with pop culture references, but director Steven Spielberg has said that he won’t be referring to any of his own movies.

Who is starring in Ready Player One?

(Image: Emma Lee)

Mark Rylance (The BFG) plays James Donovan Halliday, Simon Pegg (Star Trek Beyond) plays Odgen Morrow and Australian star Ben Mendelsohn (Exodus: Gods and Kings) will be Nolan Sorrento.

Fast-rising teenager Tye Sheridan (The Tree Of Life / Mud) will be the central character.

As an orphan called Wade Watts, his Oasis avatar name is Parzival (after Percival, the Arthurian knight).

Who else is working on the film?

(Image: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

Now 84, five-time Oscar winning composer John Williams (Star Wars) is set to score Ready Player One – he already has 50 Oscar nominations placing him second only to Walt Disney on the Academy Awards’ all-time list of greats.

In 2005, the American Film Institute declared Star Wars (1977) as the greatest American film score.

The cinematographer is Janusz Kaminski (Schindler’s List / Saving Private Ryan), a Polish filmmaker with two Oscars from six nominations, five of which were films directed by Spielberg.

Who is Steven Spielberg?

(Image: Ian West/PA Wire)

Best known as a director and producer, Steven Allan Spielberg is also a screenwriter and editor.

Formerly married to actress Amy Irving (1095-89) and married to actress Kate Capshaw since 1991, the father of six will turn 70 on December 18.

Born in Cincinatti, Ohio, Spielberg is a double Oscar-winning director for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

A prolific director of more than 50 movies, he has also been nominated for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Munich and Lincoln.

(Image: Universal Pictures/Courtesy of Getty Images)

With other films from Jaws to Jurassic Park under his belt, as well as other sci-fi thrillers like Minority Report and A. I. Artificial Intelligence, he is also the highest grossing director in history.

By deciding to shoot in Birmingham, Spielberg is following recent movies like Twentieth Century Fox title Kingsman: The Golden Circle earlier this spring and Warner Bros' The Girl with All the Gifts, starring Glenn Close - now due for release on September 23.

Watch a car chase sequence being filmed for Kingsman The Golden Circle

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Spielberg produces many other films – sharing a best picture Oscar nomination for Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima, for example – and TV series too, from Band of Brothers to Into The West and The Pacific.

In 1994, he co-founded the DreamWorks studio which has won best picture Oscars with American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind. In 2001, Shrek won the first best animation Oscar in a category dominated in most years since by Pixar.

Who is Tye Sheridan?

(Image: Gage Skidmore)

He’s a 19-year-old actor with such an auspicious record he’s already a budding superstar in the making.

With the right roles he could become the next Matt Damon – or Leonardo DiCaprio.

Tye made his debut in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (released July, 2011), starring Brad Pitt and best actor Oscar winner Sean Penn.

His first leading role followed in Mud (released May, 2013) alongside Matthew McConaughey who then went on to win the best actor Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club less than a year later in 2014.

More recently he has played Scott Summers / Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).

When will Ready Player One be released?

(Image: Graham Young)

The current date is Good Friday, March 30, 2018.

It has been pushed back from December 15, 2017 by Star Wars Episode VIII.

Warner Bros bought the rights to the film a year before the book was published.

If Ready Player One comes out in IMAX format as well, there would be three screens to choose from in Birmingham - Cineworlds Broad Street and Resorts World and Empire Great Park.

Or Mr Spielberg might just fancy a night out in of those screens if he wants to relax by watching someone else's movie during a break in filming.

Who are the screenwriters of Ready Player One?

Ohio-born Ernie Cline, 44, a poetry slam champ whose Ready Player One novel was published in 2011. He is expected to be at Forbidden Planet in London on August 21 for a book signing.

Zak Penn, 48, from New Jersey – whose credits include Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero (1993), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and Avengers Assemble (2012).

Eric Eason, a New York writer-director who wrote A Better Life (2011). Directed by Chris Weitz it earned a best actor nomination for star Demián Bichir. Like Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan, he began his career experimenting with the Super 8 format.

On July 1, @zakpenn tweeted: First week of #ReadyPlayerOne finished. Surreal. It went to 11. Thanks for writing your book @erniecline and the assist in Oology

On July 16, he tweeted: Great to have @erniecline on set this week for #readyplayerone watching him go toe to toe with Spielberg on Spielberg trivia, epic battle.

In answer to the question What’s Spielberg like to work with, he tweeted On August 1: He is tireless and relentless in pursuit of his vision and a very nice guy. Also, he’s Spielberg.

On July 25, Pegg News @simonpegg tweeted a picture of his ‘Odgen Morrow’ chair saying: ‘Aaaaand we’re back in the room’.