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‘Westworld’ creators to take their talents to Amazon for new sci-fi series

Nick Hastings
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Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy at the 2017 San Diego Comic Con for Westworld Gage Skidmore

With less than a week remaining ahead of the season 2 premiere of Westworld, series creators and showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have committed to a new project.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the husband-and-wife duo signed on with Amazon Studios to produce a series adapted from William Gibson’s 2014 sci-fi noir novel The Peripheral. THR referred to the bidding process as “a competitive situation” (between Amazon and other suitors, presumably), that led to a direct script-to-series offer, which means if Amazon likes the script, they can skip the typical pilot process and move right into full production.

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The Peripheral follows Flynne Fisher and her brother, Burton, who live in a near-future version of our world where technology has … shaped things differently (for the worse, of course, as is tradition). Flynne covers for her brother in his job as a cybersecurity guard before quickly realizing something is off, and that the connection between her old reality and her new reality isn’t quite what she expected. The novel is Gibson’s most recent work. The author is known for his “speculative science fiction” stories, including the popular Sprawl trilogy, and is often credited as one of the pioneers behind the cyberpunk subgenre.

Under their Kilter Films banner, Joy and Nolan (brother of acclaimed director Christopher Nolan) will act as showrunners and executive producers on the series, which is a collaborative effort between Amazon Studios and Warner Bros. Television. Novelist Scott B. Smith (The Ruins) has been tabbed to write the screenplay, with Vincenzo Natali (Westworld) on board to direct.

Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos has been very forthcoming about his desire for an Amazon show with the massive popularity and global appeal of HBO’s Game of Thrones, and The Peripheral could fit the bill (as could the upcoming Lord of the Rings series, which cost the Seattle-based company quite a bit). Season2 of Westworld premieres Sunday, April 22, but if you don’t have the patience to wait, check out our rumor roundup for all the news and info you can handle. Warning: There are lots of spoilers.

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