Warner Bros. Studios have released a new featurette for Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s generation-defining novel, Ready Player One, which hits Irish cinemas on March 30.

Suitably for a story that promises an adventure channelling a hefty chunk of nostalgia, the featurette allows Cline to wax lyrical about the impact Spielberg’s films had on him growing up.

“I could not have written Ready Player One if I hadn't grown up on a steady diet of Steven Spielberg movies,” Cline says at the opening of the video. "It would've been a different story, or I would've not written it at all. His work is woven into the fabric of my life."

The film features a cut of clips from Spielberg films, showing that the director has always had a unique skill for looking to the future while always keeping the emotional heart of his films firmly grounded in the bonds of friends and family.

The director reveals why he was drawn to the story of Ready Player One.

"When I read Ready Player One, it was the most amazing flash forward and flashback at the same time," Spielberg says.

The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.