Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One may have just doubled down on its nerd cred by beaming up Scotty. According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, Simon Pegg is in talks to join the cast of the highly anticipated adaptation of the Ernest Cline novel.

The film, for those of you not in the know, centers around a tech-savvy teenager (Tye Sheridan) in a dystopian near-future, who spends the majority of his time immersed in a virtual world called Oasis. When one of Oasis’ founders dies, a massive Easter egg hunt kicks off across the entire world as friends and foes alike try to solve the mystery to win a grand prize: the founder’s fortune.

Pegg is in talks to play Ogden Morrow (reported by The Hollywood Reporter and Variety as “Orgen Morrow,” but I assume that as a weird typo), who co-founded Oasis with James Halliday, the aforementioned deceased man with money to spare. To put it in a more modern context, Morrow is essentially the Steve Wozniak to deceased Halliday’s Steve Jobs.

If Pegg boards the sci-fi story, he will join the likes of Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Ben Mendelsohn. Cooke will play Art3mis, a friend to Parzival and a fellow treasure hunter, and Mendelsohn is set to play the film’s villain. The Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow production is currently in the middle of casting and looks to begin shooting this June. Ready Player One is currently slated to release on March 30, 2018.

Last year, Pegg starred in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and had a memorable cameo as Unkar Plutt in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This year, he will reprise his role as Scotty in Star Trek Beyond, which he also co-wrote with Doug Jung.

What do you think about Pegg joining the cast of Ready Player One? Which of his movies and projects would you like to see referenced in the pop culture-filled film? Let us know in the comments below.

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HT: The Hollywood Reporter

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