HBO’s Westworld may have ended after four seasons, but Warner Bros. isn’t willing to let the property sit dormant for long. Deadline reports that a remake is in the works based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 film, with superstar writer David Koepp attached and a major director being eyed.
Westworld bore a lot of the early hallmarks of Crichton’s Jurassic Park, which Koepp famously adapted for Steven Spielberg in 1993. The story centers on a futuristic western-themed amusement park for adults, where visitors are encouraged to engage with androids in an Old West environment. But as the patrons humiliate and even kill the robots, things turn chaotic when the robots start fighting back.
A little nugget that the report sort of glosses over, is that a “major filmmaker is circling” the project. The first thought is it’s Spielberg himself, as he’s been teasing a Western movie for a couple of months. Koepp also wrote Spielberg’s next film, the alien invasion thriller Disclosure Day, which opens this summer. They also collaborated on War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Koepp’s Westworld won’t have any connection to the Jonathan Nolan/Lisa Joy series for HBO, nor to Crichton’s original movie or the loose 1975 sequel, Future World. It will be a standalone effort, but you can bet if it’s a hit that Warner Bros. will be looking to expand.
