Here’s a report that Warner Bros. is moving ahead with a new Westworld film, written by David Koepp, reworking the original 1973 concept created by Michael Crichton.
The project is described as a fresh cinematic take on the foundational idea of “Westworld”—a high-tech theme park where guests interact with lifelike androids in a staged Old West environment, until the system breaks down and the robots turn dangerous.
Now, what’s hidden inside Deadline’s report is that a “major filmmaker” is circling this project…
Koepp, who wrote Spielberg’s upcoming “Disclosure Day,” previously adapted Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” for the filmmaker. Add in the fact that Spielberg has been teasing a western as his next film, and I believe we’re onto something here.
Here’s how Spielberg described this mysterious upcoming Western of his, back in March:
Can’t reveal anything right now, but I have a western in development… and it kicks ass […] There will be horses. There will be guns. There will be no tropes, I can tell you that. There’s going to be no stereotypes.
This “Westworld” rumor just makes a lot of sense, and given how “Disclosure Day” is still a month away from release, I gather that if Spielberg is indeed involved, nothing will be officially announced until after that.
The 1973 film “Westworld,” written and directed by Crichton, and starring Yul Brynner as the Gunslinger, is a science fiction thriller set in a highly stylized Wild West theme park where guests pay to live out frontier fantasies. It is heavily structured as a western on the surface—complete with dusty towns, saloons, gunfights, and a classic gunslinger figure—but all of it is artificial, performed by lifelike androids.
Koepp’s script is being positioned as a standalone reimagining rather than a continuation of the film, or recent “Westworld” HBO series, which ran four seasons before being canceled and later removed from the platform. Instead, this new version is being developed as a separate interpretation of Crichton’s original story, focusing again on the core idea of subverting the western and the concept of artificial intelligence in a controlled entertainment environment gone wrong.
Lars Von Trier is working on the 15th—and likely final—film of his career, “After,” and according to his producer, Peter Aalbæk Jensen, the screenplay is supposed to be completed this month