Ready to return to “Westworld?”
The 1973 sci-fi movie, written and directed by Michael Crichton and set in a robot-filled amusement park, is getting a remake courtesy of screenwriter David Koepp. The project is in development at Warner Bros. and, contrary to an earlier report, a director is not circling.
The original “Westworld” followed visitors of an adult amusement park, in the far-flung future of 1983. Guests of the park, which is themed to the Old West (hence Westworld), interact with humanoid robots and live out their cowboy fantasies. Of course, there is a systemic failure on the part of the park’s operators Delos and the robots start attacking the guests. (It is implied that Delos owns and runs a suite of these parks, including Medieval World.) Yul Brynner memorably played a character known only as the Gunslinger.
A minor box office hit at the time, making $10 million for MGM on a budget of just $1.2 million, it predated not only the upcoming threat of AI (hilariously, a plot point in “Westworld” detailed how the designers couldn’t get the hands on the robots quite right, a problem that still plagues generative AI imagery) and Crichton’s own “Jurassic Park,” a novel that would be released decades later and also involve a high-tech amusement park breaking down and threatening lives. Arrow Video recently released a wonderful deluxe 4K package for the original film that includes illuminating special features.
“Westworld” also inspired a mini-franchise, first with the Crichton-free sequel “Futureworld” in 1976 and then with a short-lived television “Beyond Westworld” in 1980, which took on a more global scope and only lasted for two episodes on CBS (five episodes were originally produced). Crichton was not involved in the series either.
Years later, of course, “Westworld” was resurrected by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan as a prestige HBO series. The first season, which aired in 2016 and starred Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, Ed Harris and Anthony Hopkins, was a huge hit but the subsequent seasons expanded the scale but were increasingly difficult to follow. Still, the show won nine Emmy Awards and received 54 nominations. But after the contentious fourth season aired in 2022, plans for a fifth and final season were abandoned and HBO purged the series from its streaming platform – you can buy them digitally or physical media and that’s the only way to watch “Westworld” from now on.
Koepp, one of the most successful screenwriters in Hollywood history, is coming off the release of “Cold Storage,” a nifty horror comedy that was based on his own novel, and is awaiting the release of “Disclosure Day” next month, his highly anticipated Steven Spielberg UFO movie. “Disclosure Day” opens on June 12. Last year saw the release of two Koepp-penned Steven Soderbergh movies – ghost story “Presence” and spy thriller “Black Bag.”
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