It’s hard to run a successful theme park if the attractions keep killing the guests. You just can’t get people to come back through your gates if they’re dead. But that concept can clearly still work as a business model in Hollywood. Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp is once again turning a classic Michael Crichton story about a theme park that turns deadly. Only this time he’s not adapting a tale about dinosaurs eating amusement park visitors. He’s taking on Crichton’s 1973 tale about robots turning on cowboy-roleplaying customers in Westworld.
Deadline reports that one of Hollywod’s best writers is once again turning a theme park into a kill zone. Koepp, who wrote Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: Lost World, and the franchise’s most recent entry Jurassic Park: Rebirth, is penning a remake of Crichton’s 1973 classic Westworld. While this might seem too soon after the HBO show, its timeliness is obvious.
This news comes ahead of Koepp’s next big release. He wrote Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Disclosure Day, his latest partnership with the legendary filmmaker. That’s interesting since the new Westworld is said to be looking for a “major filmmaker.” Hey, does anyone know Spielberg has experience with a Crichton story…..
This new remake is not connected to HBO’s TV adaptation of Westworld. However, Koepp is working on this big screen remake under Warner Bros., which also produced the HBO show. MGM produced the ’73 movie. Deadline also says the writer “is going straight back to Crichton’s original film.”
The 1973 movie starred Yul Brenner, James Brolin, Norman Bartold, Dick Van Patten, Victoria Shaw, and Richard Benjamin. Like HBO’s series, it took place (primarily) in an Old West theme park where guests paid to be cowboys. But it’s unclear if Koepp’s script will follow the exact same idea even if he is basing his script on Crichton’s original. In both the film and the show “Western World” was just one land of many within a larger amusement park complex. Crichton could differentiate his entry by primarily setting his story in one of the other lands seen in Crichton’s movie.
Sentient robots killing guests in Medieval World or Roman World could be just as successful as entertaining as sentient killer robots in Western World. So long as we’re only talking about the appearing on our screen. As an actual theme park business model that definitely won’t work.