HBO has finally released the first look teaser for its star-filled upcoming sci-fi series from Jonathan Nolan (brother of Inception director Christopher Nolan) and Lisa Joy, along with producers J.J. Abrams, Jerry Weintraub and Bryan Burk. Also an adaptation of the 1973 sci-fi film written and directed by Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame, Westworld is set in a theme park where robots fulfill human guests’ most hedonistic desires.
In the series, Anthony Hopkins stars as a Dr. Robert Ford, a brilliant engineer and chairman of the board of Westworld, a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park – who has an uncompromising creative vision for the park and means of realizing that vision. Also in the cast are Evan Rachel Wood, Rodrigo Santoro, Shannon Woodward, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Angela Sarafyan and Simon Quarterman.
The creepy 30-second teaser focuses on a conversation between Wood’s character Dolores Abernathy and an unnamed man as he encourages her to wake up from her dream and question the nature of her reality.
Described by HBO as being about “the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin”, the series was picked up for a full season in November last year. In the original 1973 film, Westworld told the story of a future resort wherein guests pay to live out time period fantasies brought to life by sophisticated human-like androids, before the robots began malfunctioning and killing the resort’s crew. The film spawned the sequel Futureworld, and eventually the short-lived ‘80s TV series Beyond Westworld.[blockquote cite=”Michael Lombardo, President, Programming, HBO ” type=”left”]”[With] the film … you were very invested in one particular group of humans that were enjoying the park and their experience with the robots. This is not that. This is very much told from the POV of the robots. The corporate world’s as dimensionalized as the park. And I think the visitors to the park are really not the primary focus of our show at all. So again, without giving more than that away, I think all I can say is only one character that you saw in the clip is a visitor to the park. And yeah, it resembles the film in name and in spirit and but really is, I think, otherwise not much of a reference point.”[/blockquote]
Westworld will air on HBO in 2016. Watch the teaser trailer below:
