Jonathan Nolan has explored the nature of artificial intelligence in some intense, thought-provoking ways in his show Person of Interest. Now he's making a Westworld TV show for HBO, and it's described as "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin."


In Westworld, a theme park features robots who will act out your most thrilling or taboo fantasies. But the robots go haywire and start killing people — it's basically Jurassic Park with robots. Crichton's original screenplay doesn't really explore the notion of the robots becoming sentient or self-aware — they're just malfunctioning. But the mention of "artificial consciousness" in the new TV show's logline makes it sound like Nolan will continue to delve into the themes he touched on in Person of Interest, around artificial intelligence escaping from people's control.

According to Variety, HBO has already ordered a Westworld pilot from Nolan, who will direct and co-write with his wife Lisa Joy (Pushing Daisies). Nolan's PoI production partner J.J. Abrams and his crew are once again producing. Given that this is HBO, you can probably expect the "sin" in Westworld to be a lot more explicit than it was in the original film, but hopefully we'll also have scope to explore some genuinely mature themes, around technology and social control — the technology that sets you free to explore your desires is also helping to enslave you, while you in turn are helping to enslave it.


Bear in mind, of course, that we already had a Westworld TV show — and it sucked.