It's been almost two years since Westworld was cancelled but that hasn't dissuaded Jonathan Nolan from believing that he'll eventually get to finish the show's story.
Speaking to The Wrap to promote the upcoming release of his Fallout TV adaptation, Nolan stated that he isn't going to reveal any details about how a fifth season would have ended because he thinks there's still a chance it will get made.
"Our philosophy from the beginning was you make sure each installment, each chapter should be somewhat complete, tell a good story and then you get a chance to keep going,” Nolan told TheWrap.
“But Lisa and I did have an architecture for the series and I’m big on getting a chance to finish these things. I think our hope is still somewhere down the line [for] a chance to revisit that story, and I would hate to have spoiled it now if we get a chance to do so.”
HBO's decision to cancel the award-winning sci-fi drama appears to have been influenced by a number of reasons, including the production's high cost, falling viewership, and reassessment of priorities at HBO following Discovery's acquisition of their parent company, Warner Bros.
Furthermore, HBO/WBD decided to remove the show from the Max streaming app, licensing it to The Roku Channel app.
Speaking on that, Nolan said he didn't mind the show being removed from Max as the reach of a free app is far greater than a paid subscription service..
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Nolan stated, "Look, my career began on CBS [with Person of Interest]. The amount of people you can reach with a free, ad-supported service [like Roku and Tubi, which had Westworld last year] is vastly higher than with a subscription service. That part didn’t bother me."
"But in terms of finishing the story, you understand that you get the time that you get, sometimes it’s as much as you want, sometimes it’s not. I’m so [frick]ing proud of what we made. It was an extraordinary experience. I think it would be a mistake to look back and only feel regret [over how it ended]. But there’s still very much a desire to finish it. "
He went on to add that he's open to finishing Westworld's story, even if it means shifting to a new medium like comics or graphic novels.
Lisa Joy and Nolan are no strangers to pet projects being shelved as just a few months ago, Amazon decided to pass on a second season of The Peripheral, despite a prior season 2 renewal.
In this case, the cancellation was due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strikes.
Recently, series star Evan Rachel Wood lamented the show's cancellation as she revealed that Joy and Nolan still haven't told the show's cast how the series would end.
"They weren’t writing it as we went along. They had an idea, and we were all just on a bed of nails waiting to see and hear what the conclusion of this was. What it all meant."
"We didn’t get to have that and so after building an arc and a character for almost 10 years and not getting the payoff at the end to see where it was all going — I think for us and the audience, it was awful in a lot of ways."
Westwold Season Synopsis: In the futuristic theme park known as Westworld, humans pay to live out their fantasies with android "hosts."
However, when programmer Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) discovers strange behavior cropping up in some hosts who are deviating from the programmers' carefully planned scripts, he alerts park founder Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins).
The series is based on the 1973 film Westworld written by Michael Crichton.