HBO’s “Westworld” series—a remake of the 1973 movie reconceived as a TV show—has had a pretty rough go of it these last few months, and so has the cable channel which has never appeared this weak or indecisive. In January of this year, production on “Westworld” was halted when HBO didn’t love what they saw and wanted to retool the show. Then, a month later, the cable channel, which has lost some of its top creative execs recently, scrapped Oscar-winner Steve McQueen’s mini-series entirely and seemingly pushed “Westworld” to 2017 (and this was after HBO had killed two of David Fincher’s shows as well).
“‘Westworld’ is wildly ambitious —on the page and on set,” show creator Jonathan Nolan said last year. “In broadcast TV, it’s been routine for us to write and shoot at the same time. This is a completely different animal. As we got closer to the final episodes, we realized we needed to take a break from shooting to catch up on writing. HBO and WBTV have been incredibly supportive throughout the process. It would have been literally impossible to make this show anywhere else.” Perhaps its wild ambition prompted the delays.
But it appears “Westworld” has been salvaged sooner than planned and the pilot episode will air in October of this year. Described as a “dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin,” like the movie, the series tells the story of a futuristic theme park called Westworld and is essentially a mix of science-fiction and Western genres.
J.J. Abrams is an exec producer on the show as is Lisa Joy, Nolan’s wife and a screenwriter in her own right. The first, revised teaser trailer has arrived and it gives us taste of what appears to be dark, surreal and dread-inducing television. Watch the clip below or click above on the story’s top image for the enlarged version and let us know what you think.