After years of being considered for a big-screen remake, occasionally involving Arnold Schwarzenegger, the 1973 sci-fi film Westworld is headed to HBO as a potential TV series, where the cable network can finally combine the respective settings of Deadwood, Rome, and Game Of Thrones into one big show with robots. Westworld will be written and directed by Jonathan Nolan, who’s already enjoyed great success exploring the rocky relationship between man and machine on Person Of Interest, and it’s executive produced by J.J. Abrams, because it involves remaking an old sci-fi property. (Fittingly, Abrams already has a robot TV show.)
No doubt due to Abrams’ and Nolan’s involvement, HBO has taken the unusual step of giving it a pilot production commitment, in addition to a commitment to ignoring Beyond Westworld and hoping no one ever brings it up. As of now it’s unclear how closely Westworld the series will resemble Westworld the movie, what with the onus of replacing Yul Brynner’s menacing cowboy robot and padding out the plotline of an android amusement park breaking down into chaos (unless it all happens very, very slowly, like maybe in the first episode, one of the robots develops a slight twitch). For now, HBO says only that it's “a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin,” but really, that also describes Sex And The City, so…