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HBO’s ‘Westworld’ To Premiere On October 2

By Samir Makwana
Published on: 10:29 PST, Jul 30, 2016

HBO’s Westworld is set to premiere on Sunday, October 2, at 9 p.m. in the U.S. Casey Bloys, HBO’s new programming president, formally announced the premiere date at his Television Critics Association press tour, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Westworld is a modern adaptation of the Michael Crichton’s science-fiction 1973 movie of the same name. HBO explains that Westworld is “a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin.”

J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan are creating the show for HBO. Nolan (The Dark Knight, Person of Interest) has penned the episodes along with his wife Lisa Joy (Burn Notice, Pushing Daisies). Originally set to debut in 2015, this HBO series’ production started in 2014 but later went through a couple of casting changes and reworking on the story.

At the Television Critics Association’s press tour, HBO was persistently questioned about the portrayal of sexual violence, rape, and murder in Game of Thrones as well as Westworld. When pressed about the violence on women in the network’s dramas, Bloys accepted the concerns, according to ABC17 News.

According to Variety, Lisa Joy defended the opening sequence of Westworld showing a rape scene by saying that sexual violence was heavily discussed and heavily considered while working on the scenes. She further added that it wasn’t about fetishization of those acts, but to explore the crime, establishing it, and the torment a character goes through in the stories with dignity and depth, reports The Independent.

“Westworld is a consideration of human nature. The best parts of human nature … and the basest parts of human nature. That includes violence and sexual violence.”

HBO is using the Game of Thrones formula of fantasy flavored with sex and violence to make its next big hit, reported the Inquisitr. The network desperately wants yet another crowd-pleaser fantasy show in its kitty, especially since Game of Thrones will run its natural course by next year.

Anthony Hopkins plays Dr Robert Ford, the creator of everything at Westworld [Image via HBO]
According to Den of Geek, Nolan explained that humans always tend to look at themselves whenever the question of consciousness arises. But in the show, the lines between humans and artificial intelligence will be blurred.

“The ‘hosts’ are discovering that they’ve been created in our image, but beginning to question if “humanness” is really what they want to aspire to. And given their circumstances, it’s easy to understand why they start to question whether they want to be like us at all.”

Crichton’s movie explored the fear-led apprehensions about artificial intelligence. Westworld is an adult theme park having separate sections for Roman and Medieval eras. Operated entirely by human-like robots, the vacationers can visit any section and indulge into killing or exploring their darkest desires until the robots start killing them.

HBO’s Westworld focuses on the robots’ artificial intelligence and its quest to explore what it means to be human. Despite the western theme, Westworld features sophisticated and advanced technologies. In the movie, a computer glitch causes the change in the robots’ behavior. Whereas in the show, the artificial intelligence ponders over existentialism and thereby results into series of colossal disasters.

Anthony Hopkins plays Dr Robert Ford, the creator of the robots and the machines driving the Westworld theme park. James Marsden portrays Teddy Flood, the gunslinger, and Evan Rachel Wood plays Dolores Abernathy. Ed Harris, Thandie Newton, and Ben Barnes will also join the cast.

The Game of Thrones‘ score composer, Ramin Djawadi, has worked on the music for Westworld. The production scale of this fantasy sci-fi drama is being compared to Game of Thrones and Outlander.

[Image via HBO]

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