Series co-creator Jonathan Nolan says he “100 percent” wants to finish the story of Westworld, which was cancelled after its fourth season in 2022.
Screenwriter and filmmaker Jonathan Nolan may be moving to other sci-fi pastures with this month’s Fallout, but he still has hopes of finishing what he started with his earlier TV series, Westworld.
Cancelled in 2022, the previously acclaimed series – adapted from the classic Michael Crichton film of the same name – ended on its fourth season, leaving its story unresolved.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, though, Nolan says he “100 percent” wants to give the Westworld saga the ending it deserves.
“Yes, 100 percent,” Nolan said. “We’re completionists. It took me eight years and a change of director to get Interstellar made. We’d like to finish the story we started.”
Nolan then added that he understood why HBO removed the show from its Max platform shortly after its cancellation in late 2022 – it was eventually put on free-to-view service Roku in the US. “That part didn’t bother me,” he said. “But in terms of finishing the story, you understand that you get the time that you get, sometimes it’s as much as you want, sometimes it’s not. I’m so fucking proud of what we made. It was an extraordinary experience. I think it would be a mistake to look back and only feel regret [over how it ended]. But there’s still very much a desire to finish it.”
Read more: Westworld | The race to make one of the most important films of the 1970s
At present, it isn’t clear exactly how Nolan could finish Westworld’s story, given the expense involved in bringing back its starry cast, which included Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright and Ed Harris. The Hollywood Reporter did float the possibility of at least adapting the final chapters into a graphic novel, though, which would be a more economical way of giving viewers some sense of closure.
Fallout, meanwhile, is another big-budget sci-fi adaptation from Nolan an Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy. Like Westworld, it has a starry cast – look out for Ella Purnell, Kyle MacLachlan and Walton Goggins as a nose-free gunslinger. It’ll stream on Amazon Prime Video from the 11th April.
