JJ Abrams to produce Westworld remake for HBO

JJ Abrams is set to produce HBO's remake of the 70s sci-fi Westworld. Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood will be starring in the network's latest project. The show is based on a 1973 film from writer/director Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) based on a future where tourists could visit the Westworld theme park and interact with robot cowboys in bar room brawls and shoot outs, with Yul Brynner playing a mechanical cowboy who turns on the guests when a robot malfunction spreads through the resort. The film won a great deal of laudits for its special effects.

A report form Deadline describes the series as a "dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin" featuring Hopkins as the theme park's "complicated creative director" and Wood as the android farm girl who discovers "her entire idyllic existence is an elaborately constructed lie."

James Marsden of Anchorman 2: the Legend Continues fame is in talks to feature in the pilot. No word on if or when HBO will pick the show up.