HBO’s ‘Westworld’ TV pilot will star Anthony Hopkins and lethal androids

HBO has greenlit a pilot for a TV show based on 1973 sci-fi movie Westworld, about lifelike robots breaking their programming to murder guests in a luxury theme park. Deadline reports the production will keep the setting of the original movie, and will star Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood in “a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin.”

Westworld was set in a Delos, a theme park made up of three distinct zones — Medieval World, Roman World, and the eponymous West World — and populated with humanoid androids. The park’s robots are programmed to act out certain scenes and accommodate guests sexual desires, but as the film progresses, the androids start acting strangely. One guest is killed by a robotic knight during a swordfight in the medieval area; other guests are chased by the relentless “Gunslinger,” a Stetson-wearing robot sharpshooter played by Yul Brynner.

Fittingly, given the subject material, the TV pilot is being developed by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company. Also on board is Jonathan Nolan, brother of Inception and Batman trilogy director Christopher Nolan. HBO hasn’t yet committed to a full series, but the addition of Anthony Hopkins as the theme park’s creative director and programmer lends the project some heavyweight acting support. If it does make it to full series, it’ll be one of the first times we’ve seen rampaging theme park robots on the small screen since The Simpsons parodied Westworld in its “Itchy and Scratchy Land” episode, back in 1994.