With Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden already in place, the cast for HBO’s new televised version of the Michael Crichton sci-fi Westworld is now filling out. Jeffrey Wright, Rodrigo Santoro, Shannon Woodward, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Angela Sarafyan and Simon Quarterman are the new recruits{
Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy are the executive producers, and wrote the pilot script that takes Crichton’s 1973 film as its inspiration and will explore a dark tale about the birth of artificial consciousness as android attractions in a theme park begin to go awry.
Wright is set to play Bernard Lowe, the genius head of the park’s programming division who creates the artificial people that populate it. Santoro will be Harlan Bell, a dangerous bandit droid with a keen eye for human behaviour and a belief that he must become a hunter. Woodward is Elsie King, a rising star of Lowe’s facility, who diagnoses the strange behaviour of its inhabitants. Berdal will be Armistice, a brutal bandit, while Sarafyan is set as Clementine Pennyfeather, a beguiling artificial woman who is one of the park’s most popular attractions. And finally, Quarterman will be Lee Sizemore, who crafts the park’s storylines while getting on his colleagues’ nerves.
J.J. Abrams is producing alongside regular Bad Robot partner Bryan Burk and Jerry Weintraub, and now we’ll have to wait and see if HBO picks the series up based on the pilot. Given the talent involved, it must have a good shot.