Westworld Movie Remake In The Works After HBO's Cancellation Of The Sci-Fi Series

What's better than going to an amusement park and enjoying the myriad attractions? According to the combined global box office of the "Jurassic Park" franchise, many people yearn to hit up a park where the attractions enjoy them! In a deadly fashion!

Author Michael Crichton always had a thing for amusement parks run amok. 17 years prior to writing the novel "Jurassic Park" in 1990, he wrote and directed the feature film "Westworld." This sci-fi horror delight found moneyed vacationers visiting an adult-themed playground where they could romp about in Wild West or Medieval times, engaging in barroom brawls or making like Errol Flynn and crossing swords with rogue knights. It was a great time until the robots programmed to lose to said vacationers went haywire and sought to send these attendees on a permanent vacation.

The hook of Crichton's "Westworld" film was watching a couple of corporate cowboys (Richard Benjamin and James Brolin) clumsily exchanging very real bullets with a black-hat Yul Brenner (star of "The Magnificent Seven"). When Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy expanded "Westworld" for HBO in 2016, they gave Brenner's black hat (played in this iteration by Ed Harris) a deep backstory. Nolan and Joy eagerly got to world-building, but to the dismay of some, they got away from the robots-killing-humans baseline of the series. Reviews remained marginally positive, but by the fourth season "Westworld" was playing to a diminishing crowd. Given its budget, it died.

Now, another "Westworld" remake is reportedly in the works from David Koepp, the screenwriting backbone of the "Jurassic Park" film franchise. Under his aegis, robot cowboys might once again rule the Earth. Deadline's got the scant details, and it sounds like a bleaching of Nolan and Joy's work is in the offing.

Warner Bros. Discovery is currently in mad flux, what with the impending regulatory approval for the Paramount Skydance merger. And because we live in mad times I'm going to spare you wild speculation as to how this will turn out. But what I don't see in this "Westworld" dispatch is a mention of WBD production chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, who just led the studio to a box office bonanza in 2025 and a multitude of Oscars. What's the point of resurrecting an IP that fizzled out after four seasons? And who's directing the film? Koepp's never helmed a bona fide hit. Mike and Pam took risks. The cultural moment for "Westworld" has passed. Want to provoke mainstream audiences? Make something with a dollar sign and a conscience attached to it.

Fleming reports that "a major filmmaker is circling." I hope it's his other frequent A-list collaborator Brian De Palma, but my money is on Colin Trevorrow. There's also some speculation that "Jurassic Park" director Steven Spielberg could be the filmmaker in question. At SXSW earlier this year, Spielberg declared, "I want to make a Western! I wanna shoot it in Texas!" and teased, "I can't reveal anything right now but I have something in development right now."

I just don't know how you follow up a slate of bold originals from talented filmmakers with a reboot of an amusement park disaster flick from a guy like Koepp, who's done it so many times that it's just a gig. All hail the gig economy blockbuster!