Westworld Co-Creator Reveals If the Coronavirus Pandemic Will Affect Season 4

Essentially all of the film and television industry is currently thrown into disarray, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down productions around the world for the foreseeable future. Any show that is expected to return - even those that have only recently been renewed for new seasons - is operating in new territory at the moment, and it looks like Westworld might be among them. In a recent interview with Variety, Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan addressed how these unprecedented times will impact the show's fourth season. As Nolan argued, it actually might not affect the series in the immediate future, as Season 4 has not been written yet.

"Well, I mean, on our end, the only good news in a situation like this is that the audience is accustomed to our show being off the air for a couple of years at a stretch," Nolan explained. "Now everyone else is kind of in the same boat, frankly. I have yet to hear a pitch for how you could, you know, safely, practically resume production. Illness on a set is extremely disruptive, as you know in our business. The way we shoot, the amount of labor and capital that goes into every day of shooting on a show like this one is extraordinary, as it is with all shows. It's a big machine; once you turn it on, turning it off again is extremely difficult. So I know a lot of really smart people are talking right now about how to get back into production."

Nolan did hint that as the months go on, their potential production schedule will definitely become a topic of conversation.

"From our perspective, we were not playing here anytime soon," Nolan continued. "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."

Westworld's fourth season does not currently have a release date.