Terrifying first teaser for HBO’s Westworld

And you thought Alton Towers was a theme park with a bad reputation…

Those familiar with 1973’s Westworld will know it as shorthand for robotic horror, a cult classic which still holds up some four decades later. And if not, you’ll have felt its influence (The Simpsons’ Itchy & Scratchy Land episode is pretty much based on it).

Based on Michael Crichton’s film, it presents us with a theme park of the future where visitors can live out their wildest fantasies as generals in Ancient Rome or gunslingers in the Old West, where robots are deployed as villains, citizens and even sex workers. Naturally, things go awry and everyone wants to get out of Dodge as androids turn on the humans. Bloody machines.

And now here comes the trailer for HBO’s upcoming TV remake. Starring Anthony Hopkins as the genius behind the park, James Marsden as a tourist attempting to be a gunslinger, and Ed Harris who takes on the iconic bald-headed mantle of Yul Brynner’s circuited shooter in black, it promises to be quite the ride.

Westworld hits TV screens later this year