When it comes to tackling stories of theme parks going rogue, adapted from Michael Crichton penned source material, suffice it to say that David Koepp has some previous. As the man who gave us the scripts for both Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: The Lost World, the legendary screenwriter knows exactly what to do when the doo-doo hits the jacked-up-fun-fair fan, because he’s the one who put it there in the first place. And now, per Deadline‘s reporting, it looks like Koepp is ready for some more Crichton shenanigans as he’s been tapped to write a new Westworld movie at Warner Bros.
Originally a Crichton written and directed 1973 movie (then, later, a seven-time Emmy-winning prestige Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy HBO series), Westworld takes a thrilling ‘What if?’ premise — what if there existed a robot-filled theme park where humans could live out their wildest historical (mostly Old West) fantasies, and what if said theme park had a bot go rogue and start turning said fantasies into visceral, violent realities? — and delivers a sharp sci-fi treatise on the perils of getting what you wished for. While the OG movie starring Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, and James Brolin was more of an out-and-out gung-ho action-thriller, Nolan and Joy’s series took a more philosophical approach to its own story of violent delights and violent ends, delving into artificial consciousness and what it means to be human. Where David Koepp’s Westworld will fall on that spectrum very much remains to be seen, but it’s a hell of a spectrum to consider wherever his script eventually settles.
While we have no kind of synopsis, casting news, or release timescale for Warner Bros.’ Koepp-penned Westworld just yet, one interesting nugget of info is buried in Deadline‘s reporting: ‘a major filmmaker is circling.’ Now, there are a lot of major filmmakers out there, and Koepp has worked with a lot of ’em (Sam Raimi on Spider-Man; Brian De Palma on Mission: Impossible; Steven Soderbergh on Black Bag.) Most recently however, Koepp has re-teamed with Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg — on sci-fi blockbuster Disclosure Day. And remember how Spielberg’s been talking up making an original Western in recent months? Well, Westworld has a sci-fi Western thing going on, and while it is technically an existing IP, it does have a lot of room for originality. Okay, so that might be a bit of a reach, but still… major filmmaker has got our curiosity piqued. Put it this way: we’ll be there for rope-drop when the park reopens!
