David Koepp Saddles Up for a New WESTWORLD Movie at Warner Bros.
David Koepp has spent a good chunk of his career bringing the imagination of Michael Crichton to life, and now he’s heading back into another one of the author’s most iconic sci-fi playgrounds. This time, it’s Westworld getting a fresh shot at the big screen.
According to Deadline, Koepp is writing a new adaptation of Crichton’s 1973 sci-fi thriller for Warner Bros. The original movie was written and directed by Crichton and introduced audiences to a high-tech adult vacation resort where wealthy guests could live out their Wild West fantasies alongside lifelike androids.
Naturally, things spiral into chaos when one of the gun-slinging robots stops playing by the rules and starts hunting guests for real.
The original film starred Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, and James Brolin, with Brynner delivering one of cinema’s coolest killer robot performances long before killer robots became a regular Hollywood thing.
While MGM released the original movie, Warner Bros. already has ties to the property thanks to HBO’s ambitious TV adaptation from Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan. That series took Crichton’s concept and expanded it into a sprawling sci-fi mystery that ran for four seasons and built a passionate fanbase along the way.
This new movie sounds like it could steer things back toward the lean, tense thriller roots of the original film, which honestly feels like a smart move. Crichton’s setup still works incredibly well.
A futuristic fantasy park filled with malfunctioning robots is one of those ideas that never really gets old, especially now that artificial intelligence is becoming a bigger part of everyday life.
Koepp also feels like the perfect writer to tackle it. He previously scripted Jurassic Park and its sequels, another Crichton creation built around technology turning against humanity in spectacular fashion.
More recently, Koepp wrote Jurassic World: Rebirth and also reunited with Steven Spielberg on Disclosure Day, which hits theaters on June 12 through Universal and is already being positioned as one of the summer’s major releases.
There’s also word that a major filmmaker is circling the project, though no names have been revealed yet. That alone should get movie geeks curious about where this thing could go.
The big question now is whether this new Westworld leans harder into horror, action, or cerebral sci-fi. The original balanced all three pretty well, and with Koepp involved, there’s a good chance this could end up being a slick and suspenseful return to one of Crichton’s coolest concepts.