70's Sci-Fi Thriller 'Westworld' Coming to TV?

The very real fear of insane robots at a virtual-reality amusement park was vividly brought to life in the 1973 sci-fi horror thriller Westworld. And now, HBO would like to bring an updated version of that fear right into your living rooms with a modernized re-telling of Westworld, this time in serialized episode form.

HBO has committed to producing a Westworld television pilot, to be produced by J.J. Abrams, and written and directed by Jonathan Nolan, who wrote The Dark Knight.

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The original was written and directed by Michael Crichton, who later took the theme-park-visit-goes-horribly-wrong theme and ran with it when he wrote the novel Jurassic Park. The movie is about one of the androids in the futuristic theme park, played by Yul Brynner, going haywire, and wreaking havoc and deadly terror among the park's visitors.

An attempt to turn Westworld into a show was already made in 1980, when CBS aired Beyond Westworld, but only five episodes were produced before it was canceled. Despite its incredibly short run, it managed to get two Primetime Emmy nominations for both Art Direction and Makeup.