Beloved and old-school robots-take-over-an-amusement-park Michael Crichton sci-fi **Westworld **was successful enough to spawn a sequel, Futureworld, and a TV show, but since its '70s heyday, there's not been too much chatter about bringing the engaging idea back to either the big or small screen - but all this has changed with the news that HBO and Jonah Nolan (co-writing with wife Lisa Joy) are finally making it happen, with killer acting talent in the form of Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden already lined up to star, as revealed by FilmDivider.com. Exec producing are J.J. Abrams - how does he find the time? - and Jerry Weintraub.
Entertainment Weekly has further details, adding that Hopkins will play Dr. Robert Ford, a "brilliant, taciturn and complicated Creative Director, Chief Programmer and Chairman of the Board of Westworld," who has been described as having an "uncompromising creative vision for the park — and unorthodox methods of achieving it."
Wood's Dolores, meanwhile, is "provincial, beautiful and kind... [and] about to discover that her entire idyllic existence is an elaborately constructed lie." It's a pretty safe bet that she's a robot. Also a robot is Teddy Flood, James Marsden's character, who is programmed to be killed over and over and over again, as part of the park's raison d'etre: a Wild West shoot-out where the guests get to The Man With No Name all over the plains. Teddy's in "love" with Dolores, and is also a hero of a sort.
Still at the pilot stage, there's work to be done before the world at large will get to see whether Yul Brynner's gunslinger character will get to die another day. Should it be commissioned by HBO, it will join the likes of Game Of Thrones, The Leftovers, True Detective and Utopia, replacing one of the soon-to-end series on the network, namely Boardwalk Empire, The Newsroom and True Blood.