Despite a pilot order all the way back in 2013, Jonathan Nolan (co-writer of The Dark Knight and Interstellar ) and J.J. Abrams’ (you know who this guy is) HBO adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1973 movie Westworld was delayed once again this year, reportedly until 2017. But while it still won’t hit its original summer 2016 target, HBO has now confirmed that Westworld will be coming out this year.
While no specific release date for Westworld has been offered, HBO confirmed that it would be joining their fall 2016 slate of new shows.
Though a TV reboot of a movie about a robot cowboy theme park seemed like an unlikely HBO production, footage shown at SXSW made it look like an exciting exploration of our future with robots and nascent artificial intelligence. That footage has yet to be released to the public at large, but it showcased a whole lot of bloody fun.
Here’s a sample from our write-up of the SXSW Westworld footage (which you can read here):
“So our creatures have been misbehaving. Do you think it’s sabotage? Do you imagine someone’s been diddling with our creations?” asks Anthony Hopkins, as Dr. Robert Ford.
That’s the cue for some serious violence. A Native American-bot scalps a woman. Blood splatters across the ribbon of a player piano. A bleeding robot woman in a glass box begs for her life. James Marsden mans a Civil War era machine gun, bloodlust in his eyes.
In addition to a lot of graphic sex and violence, the new Westworld has an absolutely killer cast, including Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden and Ed Harris, the only man capable of looking as badass as the original Westworld demon-cowboy-bot, Yul Brynner.
