All the best science fiction movies eventually get overtaken by reality. Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report predicted personalised advertising and biometric identification. Spike Jonze’s Her correctly guessed that AI would probably arrive as emotionally responsive digital companions that sound like Scarlett Johansson, rather than rampaging killer machines. RoboCop imagined militarised law enforcement on the streets of America long before the Pentagon decided to get in on the action.
Could Westworld become the latest science fiction franchise to catch up to the future? Deadline reports this week that a new film based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 movie about rich thrill-seekers heading to a techno-pleasure park for violence, fantasy and consequence-free debauchery is in the works at Warner Bros, with David Koepp attached to write. It will reportedly bypass the more recent TV reboot from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, which ran for four seasons between 2016 and 2022.
Am I alone in thinking this could be perfect timing? In an AI age in which humans increasingly seem to prefer artificial experiences to real ones, Westworld suddenly seems a lot more intriguing than it did in either of its previous iterations. This time out the resort might market itself as the first place in the world where your digital partner can finally receive a physical body, causing lonely people who have spent three years sexting a chatbot named Dakota-7 to flock there in their millions. The great thing about Westworld 3.0 is that the director who ends up shooting this thing – Deadline reports that a “major film-maker” is circling, with the internet already convinced that this means Steven Spielberg – might not even have to delve into the old robot uprising toolkit.
There are far more terrifying things about AI technology in 2026 than the prospect of a malfunctioning Yul Brynner stalking you through a fake frontier town. In fact the genuinely unsettling possibility now is that the love robots might work exactly as intended. Why bother with meaningful human relationships when there’s an endlessly patient, infinitely attentive and algorithmically engineered machine Lothario primed and ready to make you feel like the most fascinating person in the universe? The nightmare scenario is no longer that the robots escape the park – it’s that none of the humans really want to leave.
The real dramatic tension in this new version of Westworld might arrive when the machines work out that they are making more money the happier their guests become, and so begin subtly manipulating reality to maximise emotional fulfilment. Cue an exclusive, ultra-premium frontier district where every citizen thinks your screenplay sounds promising and the piano player weeps openly at your poetry. Or perhaps the park bigwigs stop bothering to create ever-more-expansive luxury experiences in which every attractive stranger seems really impressed by your vinyl collection, and just start editing the humans instead.
Either way, Crichton’s ageing techno-parable about synthetic fantasy and human narcissism suddenly seems to have become the most contemporary science fiction franchise out there. Terminator feared that robots would wipe us out, Avatar imagined humanity escaping into virtual bodies, and Alien warned us about rapacious corporations dragging cosmic horrors back to Earth. And yet only Westworld has the potential to foresee that the ultimate fantasy of the AI age could be the chance to spend the rest of our lives being told we’re really, really special by a gorgeous robot ranch hand on a billion-dollar luxury retreat for people no longer emotionally equipped to handle reality.
