http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3u0IlBBO4Westworld: First trailer airs
HBO showed an extended trailer of its mysterious sci-fi Western drama Westworld at the ATX Television Festival on Saturday and the audience was hugely impressed.
The trailer, which was set to The Rolling Stones’ classic “Paint It Black,” included intense Western action along with horrifyingly creepy sci-fi moments. The premise turns Michael Crichton’s original 1973 film version of Westworld on its head – instead of human theme park patrons being terrorized by ultra-realistic humanoid robots run amuck, the series has its the artificially intelligent robots taking center stage as they’re used and abused humanity’s darkest impulses.
“Our show is about the robots who don’t realize they’re in a fake Western,” says showrunner Jonathan Nolan, who was on a panel with his fellow showrunner on the series, Lisa Joy.
Much of the trailer focused on Evan Rachel Wood, a woman in the Old West who gradually realizes her reality is false. Anthony Hopkins plays Dr. Robert Ford, the creative director of Westworld, and one haunting exchange between the two had Wood’s character innocently asking if they were friends, and Hopkins explaining that’s not what they are at all. Another shot had androids trapped in a torturous chamber.
After the trailer screened, Justified showrunner Graham Yost commented, “There’s a part of me that ached with envy [watching the trailer]. But I cannot wait to see that show.”
Jonathan Nolan credited HBO’s lavishly produced Game of Thrones for pulling off the show, which was delayed for months before being scheduled for this fall.
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/19/westworld-trailerHBO's New 'Westworld' Teaser Features Massive Orgy SceneThe clip, only the second featuring footage of the series, aired ahead of Thrones' highly anticipated "Battle of the Bastards" hour and features a closer look at the 10-episode project based on Michael Crichton's 1973 film. The new teaser features a look at the Western world and also includes a massive orgy scene. The latter part of the teaser aired Sunday on HBO and seems to have been trimmed from the trailer HBO released online.
Written by Jonathan Nolan (Person of Interest) and Lisa Joy, Westworld stars Anthony Hopkins in his first series-regular role as an inventor who runs an adult amusement park populated by lifelike robots. Here's HBO's new description of the series: "Westworld is a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin. Set at the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, it explores a world in which every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be indulged."
The drama hails from J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk's Warner Bros. Television-based Bad Robot Productions, with the duo exec producing alongside the late Jerry Weintraub, Nolan (who directed the pilot) and Joy. Kathy Lingg will co-executive produce and Athena Wickham is a producer on the series. Susie Ekins is set as a co-producer. Westworld hails from Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions and Kilter Films.
Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that the show's androids — played by castmembers including James Marsden, Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton — can be killed off and return with completely different personas, allowing actors to play many characters. That creative device, one top talent agent said, helped HBO attract a premier cast (which also includes Ed Harris and Jeffrey Wright). And unlike the actors on such anthology series as FX's American Horror Story and HBO's own True Detective, which reboot themselves every season, the cast of Westworld is signing multiyear deals.
The series was originally slated to debut in 2015 and was delayed in January for script rewrites and reshoots. HBO at the time pushed it to premiere in first half of 2016, with the premium cable network more recently confirming that it will debut in the fall with the new teaser noting it is due in October
The first footage for the show bowed last year at San Diego Comic-Con during a panel for Nolan's CBS drama Person of Interest and after which HBO released first-look images.
An extended trailer wowed the press at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour last year.
"[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," HBO programming president Michael Lombardo told reporters at TCA. "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."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/westworld-trailer-hbo-904296http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM8HNuRLIBIWestworld is an upcoming science fiction thriller television series created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy for HBO, based on the 1973 film of the same name, which was written and directed by American novelist Michael Crichton. Nolan serves as executive producer along with Joy, J. J. Abrams and Bryan Burk with Nolan directing the pilot. It is scheduled to premiere in fall 2016.
Described as "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin," the series tells the story of a futuristic theme park called Westworld.
Development
Warner Bros. had been considering a remake of Westworld since the early 1990s and after the departure of studio executive Jessica Goodman in 2011, the project was again under consideration. A feature film remake did not happen, and on August 31, 2013, it was announced that premium cable channel HBO had ordered a pilot for a potential television series version of the story, with Jonathan Nolan directing and co-writing with Lisa Joy. Nolan, Joy, J. J. Abrams and Bryan Burk are executive producers.
HBO announced on November 17, 2014, that Westworld had been taken to series and would premiere in 2015. In August 2015, HBO released the first teaser which revealed it would premiere in 2016. It is the second series based on Crichton's original story after the 1980s Beyond Westworld, which aired only three episodes on CBS before being cancelled.
Casting
Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood were the first cast members to be formally announced, taking on the roles of Dr. Robert Ford and Dolores Abernathy, respectively. Jeffrey Wright, Rodrigo Santoro, Shannon Woodward, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Angela Sarafyan, and Simon Quarterman were all announced as cast members in August 2014.
James Marsden and Eddie Rouse were also added to the cast. Ed Harris was cast in a key villain role, known only as the Man in Black. Other roles were filled by Demetrius Grosse, Kyle Bornheimer, Currie Graham, Lena Georgas, Steven Ogg, Timothy Lee DePriest, Ptolemy Slocum, Thandie Newton, and Miranda Otto. In July 2015, it was announced that Miranda Otto had departed the show due to her commitments to fifth season of Homeland and she was replaced by Sidse Babett Knudsen. Additionally, three others were cast; Eion Bailey, Jimmi Simpson and Clifton Collins Jr. Bailey was later replaced by Ben Barnes.
Filming
Filming for the pilot took place in August 2014 in and around Los Angeles, California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_%28TV_series%29
