Despite hopes that Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy would get a Season 5 of Westworld to completely wrap the story up – to the extent that HBO had made deals with the cast that will now be paid out — the axe has fallen on the sci-fi series.
Though it launched with much fanfare in 2016 and scored the channel's highest viewership since True Detective, the ratings took a plummet during Season 3 and never really recovered.
The show, which starred Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson, Luke Hemsworth, Aaron Paul, Angela Sarafyan and James Marsden, returned for a pandemic-delayed fourth season this year and ended on an ambiguous, rather than giant cliffhanging, note.
"Over the past four seasons, Lisa and Jonah have taken viewers on a mind-bending odyssey, raising the bar at every step. We are tremendously grateful to them, along with their immensely talented cast, producers and crew, and all of our partners at Kilter Films, Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television," said HBO in a statement. "It’s been a thrill to join them on this journey."
"Making Westworld has been one of the highlights of our careers. We are deeply grateful to our extraordinary cast and crew for creating these indelible characters and brilliant worlds," said Nolan and Joy through their Killer Films company. "We’ve been privileged to tell these stories about the future of consciousness — both human and beyond – in the brief window of time before our AI overlords forbid us from doing so."
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