Ben Beaumont-Thomas 

Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood to star in remake of Westworld

The iconic Yul Brynner film about psychotic robot denizens of a theme park is getting the long-form TV treatment from HBO, produced by JJ Abrams
  
  

Westworld
Yul Brynner in the original Westworld, soon to be remade by HBO. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/MGM Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/MGM

HBO, the US TV network behind The Sopranos, Girls and True Detective, is to remake 70s sci-fi thriller Westworld with a host of blue-chip talent: Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood will take starring roles, and JJ Abrams will produce.

Westworld, set in the near future, imagines a theme park that recreates the Wild West, complete with artificially intelligent cowboys that visitors can shoot and kill, as well as pliant robots who agree to sexual encounters. A malfunction spreads through the robots, causing them to turn violently against the park's human visitors – with a robot gunslinger played by Yul Brynner most lethal of all. Released in 1973, it was directed by Michael Crichton, and was an early adopter of CGI.

Now HBO is expanding the action into a long-form TV series, a "dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin", according to the Hollywood Reporter. Hopkins will play the "brilliant, taciturn and complicated creative director" of the park, while Wood will play an android farmer girl "who is about to discover that her entire idyllic existence is an elaborately constructed lie."

JJ Abrams, who is currently shooting his Star Wars sequel, will produce the show, following his backing of blockbusting TV series Revolution, Person of Interest, Almost Human and Believe, the latter alongside Alfonso Cuarón.

 

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