Warner Bros. reboots ‘Westworld’ film, leaving HBO series behind

Warner Bros. is developing a feature film reboot of Michael Crichton’s 1973 sci-fi thriller “Westworld,” hiring screenwriter David Koepp to adapt the property — a move that raises fresh questions about the fate of the acclaimed but canceled HBO television series.

The project, first reported by Variety, does not yet have a director attached, though a major filmmaker is said to be circling. Warner Bros., which is in the process of being sold to Paramount Skydance, is moving forward with development amid that corporate transition. 

Crichton wrote and directed the original 1973 film, which introduced audiences to a high-tech adult vacation resort populated by lifelike androids. The premise turns deadly when a gun-slinging robot — played by Yul Brynner — stops following the park’s rules and begins hunting guests. The film starred Brynner alongside Richard Benjamin and James Brolin. 

The film earned $10 million at the box office against a reported $1.2 million budget. 

Mr. Koepp is best known for adapting Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” for the big screen in 1993, along with two of its sequels. His most recent work includes “Jurassic World Rebirth” and an upcoming reunion with frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg on the alien-invasion film “Disclosure Day,” due in theaters June 12.

The new “Westworld” film will not continue the story from HBO’s television adaptation. Warner Bros. is returning to Crichton’s original source material, making it a self-contained project with no canonical connection to previous versions of the story. 

That series, created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, premiered on HBO in 2016 to enormous acclaim. Season 1 earned 22 Emmy nominations — the most of any show that year alongside “Saturday Night Live” — and averaged 11.7 million viewers per episode across platforms, the most ever for a freshman HBO drama. The show used Crichton’s futuristic theme park as a launching pad for explorations of identity, consciousness and the ethics of artificial intelligence. 

But viewership steadily eroded over four seasons. By the end of Season 4’s run, average viewership had fallen 81% compared to the first season, according to Nielsen Media Research data. The Season 4 budget topped $160 million for eight episodes, making the declining ratings increasingly difficult for the network to justify. 

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HBO canceled the series in November 2022, and Warner Bros. Discovery removed it from Max on Dec. 18, 2022 — just four months after the season finale — shifting it to ad-supported platforms including Tubi and the Roku Channel. 

Mr. Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the “Fallout” premiere that he still intended to complete the story as originally planned.

“Yes, 100%. We’re completionists,” he said. “It took me eight years and a change of director to get ’Interstellar’ made. We’d like to finish the story we started.” With the HBO episodes still absent from Max and a separate film now in development, those remarks have grown considerably less hopeful. 

A lesser-known theatrical sequel, “Futureworld,” was released in 1975, followed by the CBS series “Beyond Westworld” in 1980 — the last major entry in the franchise before Crichton’s death in 2008. 

The new project is described as a fresh cinematic take on the foundational concept of the original film, returning the property to theaters for the first time in more than half a century.

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