HBO’s “Westworld” | Featured Trailer of the Week

HBO has long been known as the home of the most innovative, engaging content on TV, and its newest series Westworld is certainly no exception.

HBO has long been known as the home of the most innovative, engaging content on TV, and its newest series Westworld is certainly no exception. Inspired by Michael Crichton’s 1973 feature film of the same name, the show is set in a sprawling virtual theme park built to resemble the “Wild West”. Westworld is the creation of Dr. Robert Ford, who just happens to share a name with the man who famously shot Jesse James (and is played by the legendary Anthony Hopkins).

It is inhabited by artificial beings who serve as pawns for humans who pay to inflict their deepest, darkest fantasies on them—no matter how demented or depraved. But the status quo of the virtual world starts to crack when one of humanoid (Evan Rachel Wood) starts gaining awareness on what precisely is going on in this unsettling dystopian universe. Judging by the show’s new trailer reveals to us, it’s a safe bet that there is a reckoning on the horizon between the newly conscious humanoids and the human beings who have been preying on them.

Executive Produced by J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, Westworld is a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness, raising deeply existential questions about the nature of free will and what exactly defines a being as “real.” Featuring an all-star cast that also includes Ed Harris, James Marsden, Tessa Thompson, Thandie Newton, Jimmi Simpson, and Jeffrey Wright, Westworld looks full of the brash creativity and mind-bending twists we’ve come to expect from both Nolan and Abrams. It premieres Sunday, October 2 at 9pm on HBO, but be sure to check out the all-new trailer in the video above to get a taste of what we’re in for.

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