HBO’s ‘Westworld’ Trailer Begins the Robot Uprising Anew

HBO’s upcoming Westworld TV series debuted a few photos and scant teases of footage to date, even amid a bit of cast turnover, but at last, the park is finally open. Okay, not that park. Still, see Jonathan Nolan’s vision of robot uprising and a synthetic future by our first full trailer for HBO’s Westworld!

Bad Robot’s Westworld remakes the 1973 tale as “a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin.” Person of Interest creator and The Dark Knight co-writer Jonathan Nolan wrote the script with Burn Notice scribe Lisa Joy, with Nolan directing the pilot. Nolan and Joy will executive produce with Abrams, Jerry Weintraub and Bryan Burk.

The new series employs among its cast Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, X-Men star James Marsden, The Hunger Games and Boardwalk Empire star Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Raising Hope lead Shannon Woodward, 300 star Rodrigo Santoro, Angela Sarafyan, Simon Quarterman, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Ben Barnes, Jimmi Simpson, and Clifton Collins, Jr. Some of the cast members playing androids (Marsden, Newton, Wood) may also end up killed off and brought back with a new personality, similar to how American Horror Story enables its cast to play different characters.

For those unfamiliar with the original 1973 Yul Brynner-James Brolin film, Westworld told the story of a future resort wherein guests pay to live out time period fantasies brought to life by sophisticated human-like androids, before the robots began malfunctioning and killing the resort’s crew. The film spawned the sequel Futureworld, and eventually the short-lived ‘80s TV series Beyond Westworld.

For the moment, HBO’s Westworld has an unspecified 2016 premiere date. Does the trailer live up to the hype?