HBO's WESTWORLD Ordered to Series; Hopkins, Marsden, Harris to Star

 

HBO's Adaptation of the 1973 film that acclaimed author, the late Michael Crichton (Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park TIMELINE) wrote and directed, has been ordered to pilot with heavy pedigree behind it, and a star-studded cast which has signed multi-year deals to stay in "Delos".

HBO, which is home to some already impressive series such as True Detective, Game of Thrones, The Leftovers, and The Newsroom, will be adding scifi-western to that bill in 2015, as they took to Twitter earlier on Monday to drop a Vine, as well as the first official set-photo of the "Westworld" in Delos. 

The drama hails from J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk's Warner Bros. Television-based Bad Robot Productions, with the duo exec producing alongsideJerry Weintraub, Jonathan Nolan (who directed the pilot)and Joy. Kathy Lingg will co-EP and Athena Wickham is a producer on the drama. David Coatsworth is set as a co-EP and line producer, with Susie Ekins set as a co-producer. Westworld hails from Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions and Kilter Films.

James Marsden (X-Men, Enchanted), Evan Rachel Wood (Charlie Countryman, The Ides of March), Thandie Newton (Crash, Mission: Impossible II) will be joining Ed Harris (The Rock, Enemy at the Gates) with Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs) as the 'mad genius' behind the theme-park Delos.
Miranda Otto (The Lord of the Rings) and Jeffrey Wright (The Manchurian Candidate) are also set to star. 

The Hollywood Reporter also notes that, since a majority of the cast will be play androids, they can be killed off and returned with ease, often able to start playing completely different characters entirely. 

WESTWORLD follows a future where anything is possible in the world of Delos- an amusement park that for $1,000 dollars a day it's customers can stay in any of the three highly realistic parks: West World, Medieval World, and Roman World, where they can fight to the death, have sex with, or just live a life of adventure and debauchery with the androids that populate them.

That is until things go wrong, and the androids become a bit too real.