HBO’s Westworld Pilot Greenlit to Series; First Image Tweeted

It’s not much of an image, but it doesn’t have to be when you’re announcing a series written and directed by Jonathan Nolan, executive produced by JJ Abrams, and starring Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, James Marsden, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Miranda Otto and Rodrigo Santoro.

Westworld, for those who never read the Michael Crichton novel or saw the excellent Yul Brynner movie, is a spiritual predecessor to both The Terminator and Jurassic Park, set in a theme park where people can roleplay as gunslingers, and featuring a malfunctioning robot who starts killing the guests. The nature of the story would typically assume that it covers a one-off event in which the cast is whittled down to one, but as an ongoing series there’ll have to be a new angle.

Let’s see: Nolan…Abrams..Oh, okay. One of the robots will travel back in time and create itself in the process of trying to stop its own creation. Am I close? Any other guesses?