After a surprise minute-long clip shown at Comic-Con earlier this summer, HBO debuted a lengthy trailer for the upcoming series Westworld this week at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour. The trailer has not been released publicly yet, but my first impression, based on that trailer, is that this looks to be an incredibly cool, compelling series.

Anthony Hopkins and Jeffrey Wright in Westworld.

James Marsden and Evan Rachel Wood in Westworld.

Based on the 1973 film, Westworld, from Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park), about a wild west theme park populated by robots that allow guests to play out all sorts of cowboy scenarios -- until, of course, something goes terribly wrong -- Westworld comes from executive producers J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Jonathan Nolan (The Dark Knight trilogy, Person of Interest) and Lisa Joy (Burn Notice), with Nolan and Joy writing and Nolan directing the pilot.The trailer shows Anthony Hopkins, the park’s creative director, Dr. Robert Ford, sitting in a dark room, as we see a stark white body of one of the robots being formed in front of him. Hopkins says, “Our creatures have been misbehaving” to Jeffrey Wright, as robot creator Bernard Lowe. As they ponder what could be causing their issues, Hopkins says, it’s "Occam’s Razor" – the simplest solution.A montage of clips introduced most of the characters, including Evan Rachel Wood (True Blood) and Thandie Newton (Mission: Impossible II) as members of Westworld – and, based on the premise, likely robots, who begin to realize very strange things about their artificially constructed “lives,” as we see Woods saying, "I’m in a dream.” James Marsden (X-Men) and a menacing Ed Harris (who, yes, visually evokes Yul Brynner's iconic Gunslinger from the film) are also seen, in a series that looks to mix beautifully shot wild west footage with the laboratories and back rooms of Westworld – given a nice twist on the original 1970s film, with similar stark and sterile looking sci-fi interiors, but with updated visuals.The final shot of the trailer shows Marsden on the ground, filled with bullet holes, staring ahead, seemingly dead… until he suddenly turns to the side and grins.HBO president Michael Lombardo said that he wanted to preserve Westworld’s secrets, but noted that where the movie focused on a couple of friends traveling to Westworld, “This is not that. This is very much told from the POV of the robots. The corporate world’s as dimensionalized as the park. And I think the visitors to the park are really not the primary focus of our show at all. So again, without giving more than that away, I think all I can say is only one character that you saw in the clip is a visitor to the park. And yeah, it resembles the film in name and in spirit and but really is, I think, otherwise not much of a reference point.”Lombardo said that going into meet J.J. Abrams, who wanted to pitch him the idea of Westworld, “I didn’t see why it would be a series. And it felt tonally probably like something that wouldn’t be right for us. But what J.J. pitched was really wholly original, and Jonah and Lisa took it and ran with that. So I was a fan [of the film], but if someone called me up and said, ‘Do you want a series based on the film ‘Westworld’?,’ I probably would have said, ‘Probably not for us.’ And that’s not what the pitch was, and that’s not what you’re going to see.”Westworld will debut in 2016 on HBO.

Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman , IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman