The New Westworld Reboot Could Be Great, Actually
We’re going back to Westworld, whether you like it or not.
When HBO launched Westworld in 2016, the hype was unreal. Seemingly, every sci-fi/fantasy critic in the world was ready to love it before it even came out, and when the twisty series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy actually dropped, various bonkers fan theories started coming true. Westworld quickly redefined — for better or worse — the modern mystery box show. Is now now? Is this person really that person, or are they not that person with another person's memoirs? What if one person had several copies inside of other people?
For all the excellent sci-fi musings within Westworld about the nature of artificial life and the frighteningly slippery ethics of technological empires, the plotting of the show was, even to its biggest fans, a dizzying hall of mirrors in which figuring out who was who and what was what could be even more confusing than what anyone wanted. So, with the announcement that Jurassic Park legend David Koepp is penning a reboot film of Westworld, the natural question from a sane person would be: Why?
There’s an easy answer. Westworld, the original 1973 film from Michael Crichton, is still an amazing concept, and, although the more famous HBO series is an important modern sci-fi TV series — and perhaps one of the best HBO sci-fi shows ever — it didn’t fully capture the vibe of the original film. What a new reboot can do, especially with Koepp writing the screenplay (and maybe Steven Spielberg directing), is to return the basic pitch back to its roots, and update the mythology without bewildering the audience.
Westworld is the original Jurassic Park
The original poster for 1973’s Westworld.
In 1993, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park turned the 1991 novel by Michael Crichton into one of the best movies of all time. This is interesting when you remember that both Jurassic Park and Westworld are stories about high-concept sci-fi amusement parks gone wrong. As some (including yours truly) have pointed out many times before, this concept, especially Westworld, isn’t too different from the 1966 Star Trek episode, “Shore Leave,” written by sci-fi legend Theodore Sturgeon. That story, which is often played for laughs, concerns the same basic premise as Westworld; bespoke robots are created in an amusement park, but when things go wrong, people get worried about the robots turning on them.
Obviously, this is all a bit reductive, but with Jurassic Park, Crichton substituted clones (specifically cloned dinosaurs) for robot cowboys. And, so, Koepp’s screenplay captured the ethical dilemma of Crichton’s book, while Spielberg’s direction made it into a spectacle. Jurassic Park is obviously more fun than Westworld, but here’s the basic question: Why can’t Westworld have its cake and eat it too? Why does this premise have to only result in a dour, depressing, and confusing storyline, à la the HBO series?
To be clear, the HBO Westworld is not a bad show — and the performances in the series from actors like Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright, and Jimmi Simpson make it worthwhile and an honored part of a larger pantheon of sci-fi shows about robots, right alongside the reboot Battlestar Galactica. But that doesn’t mean it has to be the only take on the premise.
A Spielberg-esque Westworld could be incredible
The original 1973 Westworld was tense and smart. But not perfect.
At SXSW 2026, Steven Spielberg confirmed he was working on a western that “kicks ass.” With long-time Spielberg collaborator Koepp on the Westworld project, some are theorizing that the mystery Spielberg project could be this Westworld reboot. But, even if that’s not the case, a bigger, more crowd-pleasing version of Westworld, in the mold of certain Spielberg films, wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Again, if we think about Westworld as more like a large-scope episode of the classic Star Trek or The Twilight Zone, and less like a serial mystery-box prestige TV show, the potential for an incredible feature film is obvious. Hell, the movie wouldn’t even need to ignore the TV show entirely; it could be set in some far future in which the park is created anew. Or, take place in a different timeline and feature a few cameos from the cast of that show as a tribute. But, as dark and brooding and strange as the 1973 film is, the HBO version never really captured what that movie felt like.
And, to take it one step further, the HBO show never truly fixed what was wrong with the original film: pacing and stakes. Jurassic Park works because we like all the humans, and the stakes are immediate and in your face. Both existing versions of Westworld suffer from living up to the cool potential of the basic conceit, and as such, the characters are either not as likable, or the motivations are murky.
A tight, old-school gee-wiz script from David Koepp could hypothetically fix all of this and give us the platonic ideal version of Westworld we’ve wanted all along. Murderous robot cowboys are a wonderful reason to go to the movies, but, to date, that pitch has never quite followed through on becoming a truly conceived piece of pop art. If there must be a Westworld reboot, then sci-fi idealists can approach it with an open mind and with the simple thought that maybe, just maybe, the third time is the charm.
