Go, WESTWORLD. Surely nothing can go worng with another reboot…

As noted in our feature on the ‘end of the world‘, Westworld was created by Michael Crichton back in 1973 when he wrote and directed a film about a futuristic theme-park where visitors could interact with life-like robots to live out their fantasies. Of course, just like any big-screen theme-park, things take an unfortunate turn when those robots revolt, turning on their visitors and controllers and running amok. (The film’s poster tag-line proclaimed it was ‘…a place where nothing can possibly go worng…‘.) Alongside James Brolin and Richard Benjamin, Yul Brynner played the iconic robot gunslinger who proves a particularly hardened adversary.

A less-inspired sequel, Futureworld, followed in 1976, with Yul Brynner the only person reprising their role. In 1980 there was the attempt by CBS to turn the idea into a series, but only a handful of episodes were ever broadcast due to poor ratings.

In 2016, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy re-imagined the core idea for HBO and asked not only what would happen if the robots revolted, but if they actually won, chnaging the fate of humanity and evolving with their own consciousness to shape the world anew. It ran for four seasons (stretched between 2016-2022) on HBO but was unfortunately cancelled before a planned fifth and final season.

The series was certainly a deep-dive on the idea, too cerebral and slow-moving for some, but still one of the most ambitious series in recent memory.

So, it’s a little of a surprise to find that Westworld might be reinvented yet again with news that another film is being planned – though conceived as another reboot rather than a continuation of the series. Screenwriter David Koepp will be the one adapting it for the screen, somewhat ironically given that he’s also penned  several Jurassic Park movies – another franchise built on things going askew at a theme park…