The 'Thor' actor and the 'True Blood' alumna land roles in the HBO pilot which is adapted from the 1973 sci-fi movie and is produced by J.J. Abrams.
- Jul 23, 2014
AceShowbiz - Anthony Hopkins is set to make his television debut. The Academy Award-winning actor will star in HBO's "Westworld", a small-screen adaptation of the 1973 sci-fi western-thriller film. He will be joined in the J.J. Abrams-produced project by Evan Rachel Wood.
The original movie directed by novelist Michael Crichton is set in a futuristic theme park populated with robot characters. Yul Brynner played an android who tormented guests of the park, played by Richard Benjamin and James Brolin.
Hopkins, who played Odin in "Thor" and its sequel, will play Dr. Robert Ford in the HBO pilot. He is described as "the brilliant, taciturn and complicated Creative Director, Chief Programmer and Chairman of the Board of Westworld; Ford has an uncompromising creative vision for the park-and unorthodox methods of achieving it."
As for Wood who earned a Golden Globe and Emmy nomination for her role on HBO's miniseries "Mildred Pierce", she will play the "provincial, beautiful and kind" Dolores Abernathy. "Dolores is the quintessential farm girl of the frontier West-who is about to discover that her entire idyllic existence is an elaborately constructed lie."
The upcoming TV remake is currently at the pilot-order stage. Should HBO move forward with the project, it will mark the first regular TV gig for "Silence of the Lambs" star Hopkins.
The upcoming show is described as "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin." Jerry Weintraub and Bryan Burk join Abrams as executive producers, while Jonathan Nolan is on board as director.
