HBO Halts Production Of Westworld Due To Positive COVID-19 Test

HBO is halting production on Westworld due to COVID-19 protocols. Warner Bros.’s well-regarded show has a positive covid test appear from someone on the production team according to Deadline. They’ve been testing diligently throughout this process and this will start a two-day pause period. With the rise of the Delta Variant of the COVID-19 virus across the United States, stories like this are beginning to appear again. American Horror Story just had to take similar measures during their 10th season. It isn’t just American productions feeling the crunch as well. Both Bridgerton and HBO’s spinoff Game of Thrones series have been hit with delays too. It will be something to monitor as the months stretch on. When the pandemic began, Hollywood slowed to a crawl for the most part. That put all sorts of trajectories on the back burner as studios strived to keep both talent and the other workers safe amidst the virus. Hopefully, this is as rough as it gets for the staff on Westworld.

Just last year, co-creator Jonathan Nolan said that he was so lucky to have talent like Evan Rachel Wood, Tessa Thompson, Ed Harris, and Thandie Newton aboard the show.

“We’ve been very, very lucky to work with this cast, this crew, and now, partnering with Denise,” Nolan told Variety. “When you have a show going like this, you want to stay as long as you’re telling a compelling story. We’re heading towards that end, but we haven’t completely mapped it out. At this point, part of the work is looking at the rest of the story we have to tell. It’s two impulses, one against the other. You don’t want to walk away from people who are as talented and cool as this. They’re all lovely, lovely people, and they love working together, we like working together. At the same time, you don’t want to outstay your welcome. You have a story to tell, and you want to go out without feeling like you’ve outstayed your welcome. So we’re trying to balance those things a bit.”

He also hyped where the show was going after that incendiary end to Season 3. “From our perspective, we were not playing here anytime soon,” co-creator Jonathan Nolan explained after the finale. “We gotta write it first. And so, it’s not an issue that we’re dealing with yet and we’re waiting for smarter people than us to come back and explain how this can be done safely. At the same time, we’ve got a lot of people who need to go back to work. So again, it’ll be a balancing act in terms of making sure that, you know — the show must go on, but it must go on safely. So balancing those two things against each other is something that we’re going to be talking about a lot later in the year.”

Do you think Westworld will remain on schedule? Let us know down in the comments!