Over fifty years after it first graced movie screens, Westworld is saddling back up. The film was a precursor to Michael Crichton‘s Jurassic Park, so it’s only appropriate that one of the people who turned that bestselling book into a Hollywood blockbuster is part of the posse that’s set to bring Westworld back to the big screen.
According to reports, David Koepp has been tapped to pen a new version of Westworld for Warner Bros. Koepp has a long history with the late Crichton, who wrote and directed the original 1973 film. Koepp adapted Crichton‘s 1990 novel, Jurassic Park, into Steven Spielberg‘s box-office-devouring smash hit; Koepp would go on to adapt Crichton‘s dino-sequel, The Lost World (and was eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex in the resulting film), and returned to pen last year’s Jurassic World: Rebirth, which adapted a never-filmed sequence from Crichton‘s original novel. He was also tapped to write an adaptation of Crichton‘s posthumous novel Pirate Latitudes for Spielberg, but the film never came to fruition. Most recently, he wrote the upcoming science fiction thriller Disclosure Day for Spielberg, which will hit theaters this summer.
What Is ‘Westworld’ About?
Set in the near future, Westworld takes place at the high-tech amusement park Delos, which is split into a number of “worlds” that recreate a historical period, including Western World, Roman World, and Medieval World. The park is populated by lifelike robots that visitors can have sex with or even “kill.” Two friends, Peter (Richard Benjamin) and John (James Brolin), are enjoying Western World when a computer glitch makes the robots go berserk, turning violently against the human guests. They soon find themselves pursued by the relentless Gunslinger (Yul Brynner), whose remorseless, emotionless manner presaged later films Halloween and The Terminator. The film was a pioneer in using digital effects to represent the point of view of the androids, and was a critical and commercial success. It spawned a 1976 sequel, Futureworld, starring Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner, and a short-lived TV series, Beyond Westworld; Crichton was not involved in either project.
Westworld most recently graced the screen as a loose adaptation that premiered on HBO in 2016; it was created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, and starred Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, and Jeffrey Wright. While it maintained the concept of a Wild West theme park staffed by androids, the show’s plotlines became increasingly complex and opaque; it was cancelled in 2022 after four seasons.
A new big-screen remake of Westworld is in development; no release date has yet been announced.
via Collider