The issues Westworld was exploring went from “sci-fi to documentary film” through the years, according to co-creator Lisa Joy, who hinted at what a fifth season of the HBO smash could have looked like.
Delivering a Series Mania keynote, Joy said that advances in AI and the invention of ChatGPT mean that Westworld’s subject matter has become more relevant and contemporaneous of late.
“These topics will continue to be explored if not in Westworld then in other series, taking [the topic] to new levels,” she said, in conversation with Deadline. “I think it’s an area rife with possibility.”
Westworld was canceled by HBO Max after four seasons late last year and both Joy and co-creator Jonathan Nolan have said they would have liked it to continue for a fifth and final instalment. Roku and Tubi have since picked up the show’s back catalog.
Throughout the series, which lasted for six years from 2016, Joy explained the issues Westworld was exploring “went from sci-fi to documentary film.”
She revealed that herself and her writing team had “tentpole moments planned for every season” from the pilot onwards. “
“Making the pilot was like an intellectual hellscape,” she said. “You start with the bare bones and then everyone contributes new ideas or inspirations.”
Writers’ strike
Questioned on the looming writers’ strike, Joy said that while she personally can “manage without shows for a while,” she backs the Writers’ Guild to “act for the collective good.”
“It’s very scary for everyone,” added Joy. “We don’t have a social safety net in the U.S. or healthcare even so even if you get a staffer job on a show there’s no guarantee that you will get another job immediately. The Guild is working to make it possible for writers at all levels to have an easer time supporting themselves, which is incredibly important.”
Joy talked the Series Mania audience through an impressive career that has included Amazon Prime Video’s The Peripheral and the upcoming adaptation of video game Fallout for the same network.
She stressed many of her proposed projects never made it to air, including an adaptation of her graphic novel Helena, which failed with Warner Bros as the studio “couldn’t make a deal with a small indie comic company,” she revealed.
The project was then housed with Fox but that studio wanted a male lead rather than female, Joy explained.
“No concept ever dies – it always seems to become another show so you have to keep going,” she said.
On the horizon is Fallout and HBO’s The Son, which she is producing via her and Nolan’s Kilter Films, while she is also working on a “couple of other projects that I’m really excited about” including “some more video game stuff.”
She also gave a window into her showrunning process.
“The job of showrunner is not simply to be a writer,” she explained. “I’m very engaged in looking at finances of every show and where we can maximize value and put that on screen.”
