If the lead-up to SDCC has left tumbleweeds rolling through your newsfeed, here’s some groundbreaking news to shake things up a bit: the original 1990 Tremors is returning as a remake, and HBO’s series adaptation of Westworld has gained two big-name stars. I’m moderately excited for each reboot, although my curiosity would be more peaked if the premises of the two worlds were combined. An HBO show about an android-run amusement park terrorized by giant worms? Would. Watch.
Tremors has lived on since 1990 in four direct-to-video sequels, a TV show, and a video game, but rumor has it that Universal’s update will be a reboot of the original rather than Tremors V. The new addition to the giant worm genre will start filming in South Africa soon under the direction of Don Michael Paul (Who’s Your Caddy, Jarhead 2: Field of Fire). Obviously those directing credits don’t inspire a ton of faith, but then again, Tremors isn’t your typical decades-old franchise: I doubt fans are worried about Paul besmirching the series’ good name.
The series adaptation of the 1973 sci-fi movie Westworld has a little more critical credibility than Universal’s newest project, especially after HBO’s announcement that Evan Rachel Wood and Anthony Hopkins will be joining the cast. ET Canada reports that Oscar-winner Hopkins will play Dr. Robert Ford, the director of an android-run park designed to simulate the Old West. (The original Westworld was written by Michael Crichton, who seems to have had an inherent distrust of amusement parks.) Hopkins will be joined on the J.J. Abrams-produced series by Evan Rachel Wood as Dolores Abernathy, a farm girl coming to terms with the artifice of her frontier life.
I’m still not entirely convinced that these two modern Western reboots shouldn’t combine forces. Androids, graboids, the two can’t be that different, right?
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