Exclusive: Westworld Movie In Development
As the Terminator movies have proven, you can only keep AI down for so long. Our trusted and proven sources tell us that in spite of the Westworld series’ cancellation at HBO, Warner Bros. is rebooting the property as a feature film. Rather than being made strictly for HBO or for the Max streaming platform, this Westworld is heading straight for theaters.
We’ve exclusively learned Warner Bros. is rebooting Westworld as a feature film headed to theaters.
Considering Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s statements about turning more to proven franchises — such as the announced Harry Potter series as well as the reboot of the Lord of the Rings — a return to Westworld makes sense. While the show’s popularity dipped sharply after its inaugural season, those first ten episodes were huge hits for HBO both on the critical and viewership fronts.
Of course, the Westworld franchise began on the big screen. Long before it was on HBO, Westworld was a 1973 sci-fi western with Yul Brynner in the lead role as The Gunslinger. The film was an experiment of sorts, with novelist Michael Crichton — best known as the author of the novel Jurassic Park which Steven Spielberg used to make cinematic gold — directing the film, writing the screenplay, and authoring a novelization which was released in conjunction with the movie.
We do not know for certain if the Westworld film will be hard reboot of the story or a continuation of the series, but the former option would seem the most likely course.
If a video game like Red Dead Redemption became a theme park, it would be Westworld.
While, for example, HBO continued the story of another one of its acclaimed series — Deadwood — with a film, that feature was never widely released in theaters and was meant for fans of the show. In order to get as many butts in theater seats as possible, Warner Bros. would likely not want to release a movie that required four seasons of TV viewing to understand.
HBO’s Westworld
You could also argue a hard reboot of Westworld would be poetically fitting considering the premise. The first season of the HBO series takes place in a futuristic theme park made to appear like an environment in America’s “wild west.” Other than the visitors and employees, however, every person in the titular park is an artificial life-form living the same day over and over again after their own daily reboots.
Because the characters in the theme park are not legally considered to be people, the wealthy park visitors are welcome to subject them to whatever they like — including murder, torture, and rape. If a video game like Red Dead Redemption became a theme park, it would be Westworld.
We don’t have any word yet if any of the talent from the series will be included in the movie, and any decisions about that would likely need to wait until after the SAG-AFTRA strike. Warner Bros. could certainly do worse than to recruit some of the HBO talent. Among other impressive actors, Westworld starred Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Aaron Paul, and Thandiwe Newton.
