‘Westworld’: The sci-fi remake that almost teamed Quentin Tarantino with Arnold Schwarzenegger
Over the years, Quentin Tarantino has developed a habit of picking up and dropping an assortment of different projects, with the number of titles he’s toyed with comfortably outweighing the nine features he’s actually gotten around to directing.
With The Movie Critic set to mark his tenth and final movie before he rides off into the sunset in avoidance of becoming a shadow of his former self, it stands to reason that unless he backtracks on his word, nobody will ever see a Tarantino-helmed sci-fi. It’s a genre that doesn’t stand out as one perfectly suited to his sensibilities, but that’s what makes it such an appealing prospect.
He was flirting with a standalone Star Trek film for a while, but the most tantalising by far saw both the two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker and action icon Arnold Schwarzenegger circling the exact same project. It ended up happening eventually completely differently from when neither of them was involved, but it’s a fascinating what-if scenario to imagine how things could have turned out had they taken the plunge.
Schwarzenegger has never been shy in naming writer and director Michael Crichton’s 1973 classic Westworld as one of his favourite features, to the extent his performance in James Cameron’s The Terminator was directly indebted to Yul Brynner’s emotionless-yet-charismatic turn as the Gunslinger. In a post-Jurassic Park world, the evidence was there that Crichton’s reinterpretations focusing on a theme park gone awry had the potential to do massive business, and the ‘Austrian Oak’ wanted in.
In October 2002, Schwarzenegger was announced to be playing the robotic killing machine in a Westworld remake, which came shortly before he played a robotic killing machine in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. “I am very excited to be working on Westworld, I loved the original film when I saw it in 1973 and have wanted to remake it for several years,” he said. “After following the project for some time, I am really thrilled it has finally come together at Warner Bros.”
Unfortunately, politics ended up getting in the way, leading Schwarzenegger to abandon Hollywood in favour of becoming the Governor of California. Reports at the time indicated that Tarsem Singh was being courted to direct, but the juiciest scuttlebutt by far named Tarantino as a potential contender in what would have been not only his sci-fi debut but his first major effects-driven blockbuster, too.
As tends to be the case, though, he decided his time was better off spent focusing on films he developed himself from the ground up. Tarantino confirmed to The Playlist that he was indeed offered the chance to take the reins on Westworld V2.0, with the screenplay having been penned by The Hunger Games and Captain Phillips scribe Billy Ray.
It wasn’t to be, and the redux eventually made it to screens through Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s lavish HBO series that gradually went off the rails following an incredible first season, but seeing Tarantino and Schwarzenegger bring it to life could have been something special.
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.