The story of Ready Player One went like this:
In the dystopian year 2045, the real world had become disappointing, chaotic, and on the verge of collapse, so people pinned their hopes for salvation on a virtual game universe called the OASIS. Strap on the VR gear, and anyone could escape every hardship of reality and slip into a world of pure happiness.
When the OASIS's founder died, he left the world a contest: whoever found the golden Easter egg he'd hidden inside the game would inherit his entire fortune, including ownership of the OASIS itself. The contest birthed a brand-new profession—"egg hunters"—and the staggering prize drew the attention of every capital giant on Earth.
The protagonist, naturally, was the chosen one: a person blessed by fate. Even as the world's biggest capital powers schemed to block ordinary people from the hunt and seize the fortune for themselves, he held firm, solved every riddle, cleared every challenge, and ultimately inherited the OASIS founder's entire estate.
Happy ending.
Honestly, the story itself was simple—basically a monster-fighting, level-grinding power fantasy at its core. It wore the costume of adventure and puzzle-solving, but most of the "puzzles" were really just references to other works. The riddle for the Crystal Key, for example, boiled down to guessing which Atari 2600 game the OASIS's designer loved most—which isn't really puzzle-solving at all. It's just Steven Spielberg using the characters as a mouthpiece for his own nostalgia. Same with the moment the protagonist runs out of "lives" and has to play the 1980 game Adventure to earn one back—what does that actually have to do with solving a puzzle?
And yet, both the novel and the film were enormous successes regardless. The novel hit The New York Times bestseller list the moment it released, earning praise as "the adult version of Harry Potter." The film cost somewhere between $155 and $175 million to make and pulled in $607 million worldwide. Its home video and streaming revenue even ranked sixth for the year—which wasn't actually a poor showing, given the films ahead of it: Avengers: Infinity War, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Incredibles 2, Mission: Impossible — Fallout, and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Losing out to Marvel, Jurassic Park, Pixar, Tom Cruise, and Harry Potter was nothing to be ashamed of.
The real reason Ready Player One succeeded despite its unremarkable leveling-up plot was its sheer volume of borrowed IP. The novel itself was practically an "infinite-flow" mashup, weaving in Dungeons & Dragons, WarGames, and Blade Runner. When Spielberg brought it to the screen, he piled on Back to the Future, The Iron Giant, The Shining, King Kong, Godzilla, Overwatch, Street Fighter, and reportedly more than 620 other references.
Call it loving tribute to childhood classics if you want to be generous. Call it selling nostalgia if you want to be honest. Either way—anyone in the content business knows nostalgia sells.
Margot's pitch had landed remarkably close to Ready Player One's own playbook, and the moment Isabella heard that her villain could wield the combined powers of Marvel's three biggest heroes at once, she—someone who'd once sat in a theater in her past life reminiscing right along with everyone else—burst out laughing. Partly at how unpredictable things turned out. But mostly because—
"Okay, you two go eat." She waved them off and sat back down. "I don't want to go out anymore. Just bring me something when you're back."
"What?" Margot looked puzzled. "Why?"
"She's got an idea," Catherine said, already understanding her sister perfectly. She tugged Margot by the arm. "Don't bother her. Let's go eat. Right now, all she wants is to get the idea out of her head and onto the page. She won't feel hungry yet—eating later will be fine. And don't feel bad for her, either. If we don't leave now, we won't be able to leave at all, because once she starts brewing an idea—hmph, you know The Voice? I wrote that script."
To be fair, once Margot realized Isabella meant to skip dinner entirely to keep working, she did want to push back—after all, the body is the foundation of any revolution. But when Catherine, who'd seen this play out plenty of times before, told her that Isabella's quiet moments never lasted but her noise absolutely would, and that once she sorted her thoughts out she'd turn everyone around her into unpaid typists, Margot swallowed whatever she'd been about to say and made her escape without further argument.
If she'd had even a little patience for studying, after all, she'd never have run off to join the circus as a kid. Writing, to her, was suffering on top of suffering.
"Catherine! You're spreading rumors about me again!"
Catherine hadn't bothered lowering her voice, so Isabella caught every word of the "slander." Catherine ignored her sister's pout completely, stuck out her tongue, and bolted—gone in a flash, leaving Isabella rolling her eyes behind her.
Once they'd left, Isabella turned her full attention back to the proposal in front of her. She thought it over for a while, and once her ideas had settled, she reached for the keyboard.
The three settings Margot mentioned—usable as-is, no changes needed. If we build from there, the protagonist could be a family hero?
But if she's a family hero, doesn't that mean I'm shooting an actual superhero origin film?
Tsk. I really can't catch a break. Can't even retire properly.
Amid the sound of typing, the outline for an untitled superhero film began to take shape in the document:
A cyberpunk world, every resource hoarded by the upper class. The wealthy lived in extravagance while ordinary civilians looked up at them from the "Dark City" and its garbage-house slums—Night City, basically. Cyberpunk 2077, more or less.
But this world's path upward wasn't sealed off. In fact, it was crystal clear: any ordinary civilian who wanted to rise above their station could sign up for the "bounty hunter" selection. Strong enough, and you could defy your fate entirely—because every "superior person" in this world had earned that status as a multiverse bounty hunter.
There was no government here. Order was maintained by a single company—one that controlled time-space travel itself. Generate value for the company, gather intelligence from other universes, or haul back resources from elsewhere, and you'd be recognized as one of the elite, granted everything ordinary people could never touch.
So why would a company built on plundering other universes still bother with selective recruitment instead of just shipping people out in bulk—unleashing some kind of Fourth Calamity to colonize everything at once? Simple, dear: time-space travel burns resources. A bounty hunter without enough guts, skill, and raw combat power won't make it back alive, and every failed trip is a loss on the company's books. And nobody running on capitalism accepts a money-losing deal. So the company handpicked its strongest soldiers and sharpest minds for traversal missions, minimizing the odds of a bad investment.
The protagonist—the role Isabella would play—was one of the ordinary people. Her family was poor, her father gravely ill, and with no money for his treatment, she signed up for the bounty hunter selection.
The selection ran in three stages. Candidates entered "small worlds" built by the company, where simulated traversal would test whether they had what it took to become a qualified bounty hunter.
Except—that "simulated small world" framing was only the company's official line. In reality, the virtual worlds candidates entered had once been real places, reduced to simulations only after the villain had fully conquered them.
The first world the protagonist entered: Jurassic Park.
Isabella wanted to design this stage as parkour—something close to Temple Run. Before becoming official bounty hunters, the candidates were still ordinary people; without enough guts and wits, none of them would walk out of the Jurassic world alive.
The second world the protagonist entered was Men in Black. Dinosaurs, after all, had once actually existed on Earth—candidates might find the courage and cleverness to survive that. But facing something entirely outside their understanding was a different test of nerve. No one could know in advance who'd hold up. So in this stage, candidates had to capture an alien as honorary Men in Black agents. Complete the mission, and they passed.
The third world was Resident Evil—or maybe World War Z. The logic here was simple: if a candidate couldn't carve a path through a zombie horde, what business did they have running missions in unfamiliar worlds later?
Of course, these three stages were only Isabella's working draft—nothing was locked in. Swap Resident Evil for Alien. Swap Men in Black for Terminator. Swap Jurassic Park for The Day After Tomorrow. There was nothing stopping her—she could touch almost every IP on Earth now and use whatever she wanted. Not convinced? Then don't blame her for throwing a couple of punches your way.
Of course, she wasn't entirely unreasonable. If the Norwegian Nobel Committee insisted on handing her a Peace Prize, she could probably manage a full year without hitting anyone.
Hehe.
After clearing all three stages, the protagonist became a true adventurer. The day she earned her bounty hunter certification, her father received the best medical care available—which made her genuinely happy. As her father recovered day by day, she received her first traversal mission. The scene shifted, and she landed in DC, meeting Catwoman.
First movie: done. Second movie: beginning.
"Okay, from here on, that's all Kevin Feige's problem. However many DC movies get made is up to him—I only want to film one. After DC, Marvel. After Marvel, Star Wars, depending on how things go. I really don't want to shoot that many films total—but if I do go there, I want the protagonist to learn the Force. May the Force be with you."
"As for the ending—what do you think about making the villain's whole scheme about immortality? He's been colonizing the multiverse because he discovered that refining the world-origin of a trillion worlds into his own body grants true immortality. To stop him, and to avenge everyone he's killed, the protagonist raises a rebellion to topple his rule and destroy the time-space machine entirely. Once the connection between the main world and the secondary worlds is severed, every universe gains peace—though the superpowers tied to the main world vanish along with it. The rebels don't care."
"The final battle pulls in every IP people actually want to see: Superman versus Thor, Skywalker and Vader trading blows, the T-800 smashing Megatron, Jaina against Arthas. In the end, the protagonist beats the villain down and destroys everything he's built."
"But just when they think they've won, the villain erupts back to life—he still wants to kill the now-powerless protagonist and reconnect every universe. Because there's one universe whose power doesn't disappear even once severed from its source: idealistic magic."
"The villain pulls a wand straight out from his crotch, sneering as he raises it to cast Avada Kedavra on every rebel in the room. But—" Isabella flicked her wrist. "Expelliarmus."
"So—what do you think of that ending?"
Maybe because they didn't want to keep Isabella waiting too long, or maybe because film crews kept food running around the clock for genuine VIPs—either way, Catherine and Margot were back with takeout in under an hour.
The moment they walked in, they caught Isabella reaching into her own crotch. Isabella's gesture stunned them both—right up until they realized she was just describing how the entire series would end on a note of magic, and they immediately relaxed.
"I think it's a great idea," Catherine said, nodding. "Designed right, this could be the final film of your whole career."
"You should get a transformation moment at the end too," Margot added. "Put the wizard robes back on, return to where you came from—the sense of destiny would be off the charts."
With both of them sold on the idea, Isabella practically started wagging her tail. She popped open the food containers they'd brought back—pan-seared mustard lamb chops, creamy bacon scallops—then stood, handed her sister the keyboard, and said, "Catherine, the outline's done. I'm leaving the rest to you," before walking off with the food box still in her arms, gone before her own sentence had fully landed.
Catherine rolled her eyes. "Are you serious? Why am I writing this nonsense for you again?" Grumbling the whole way, she sat down anyway and started thinking through how to expand it.
Her mouth said no; her body said yes. Margot grinned at the irony—right up until Catherine turned and slid the laptop in front of her instead.
"Huh? Me?" Margot blinked, stunned.
"Obviously," Catherine said, raising an eyebrow. "You're the one who gave Isa this whole line of thinking in the first place—you understand it better than anyone. And don't worry about getting it wrong. I'll fix it after you're done."
With that, she swept off, leaving Margot sitting there, dumbfounded.
So even with the idea Isabella had been chasing for years finally solved, the project itself still couldn't officially launch. Three reasons stood in the way.
First, the whole "infinite-flow" project depended on The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises actually succeeding. If those films flopped, the project could still technically happen—but the entry points into DC and Marvel would have to be rethought entirely.
Second, it depended on The God of Cookery succeeding. That film was the first official outing for Isabella's own personal IP—if it bombed, everything that followed would only get harder.
Finally, it depended on Harry Potter actually ending. The "infinite-flow" project needed at least five films across five stages—Origin, DC, Marvel, Star Wars, and Endgame. One movie per stage was already five films; even shooting one a year, that meant five straight years of work. And if any of the DC, Marvel, or Star Wars stages expanded into trilogies, the total workload would dwarf Harry Potter entirely. So until Harry Potter wrapped, she could afford to stay relatively relaxed about it.
As if. Because The God of Cookery released on the 27th—her next real exam, just three days from its global premiere.
So before anything else, formally throwing herself into The God of Cookery was the immediate priority.
But before that—
"Catherine?" Isabella looked up suddenly while eating her boxed dinner in the dining room, mind still sorting through the future.
"What?" Catherine, watching TV in the living room, turned her head. In the side room, Margot—still grinding through her writing assignment—perked up her ears too.
"Call Mom."
"Hm?"
"Tell her I want to acquire a game company, and that she should come back."
"Acquire a game company?"
"Yeah. Tell Mom I want to buy Ubisoft."
"Buy Ubisoft?"
Catherine just stared, stunned.