http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/08/westworld-plan
Westworld has already figured out the next 5 seasons
HBO’s upcoming Westworld stirred up worrisome reports when the production temporarily shut down last January in order to give showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy more time to work on the final episodes of the season.
But there was a little more to the behind-the-scenes creative challenge that was being solved. The Westworld team was determined to address another pressing issue during their break, as well. It turns out, producers wanted to firm up their master plan for the entire series – all the way to the show’s eventual finale – and lay that groundwork in the first season. That should be quite reassuring to fans of complex, mythology-driven TV shows, which have a spotty record of longterm narrative coherence.
“It wasn’t about getting the first 10 [episodes] done, it was about mapping out what the next 5 or 6 years are going to be,” Westworld actor James Marsden says. “We wanted everything in line so that when the very last episode airs and we have our show finale, five or seven years down the line, we knew how it was going to end the first season – that’s the way Jonah and [executive producer J.J. Abrams] operate. They’re making sure all the ducks are in the row. And it’s a testament to Jonah and Lisa and HBO that we got them right, especially the last three scripts. They could have rushed them and get spread too thin. They got them right, and when they were right, we went and shot them.”
Which isn’t to say the producers didn’t have some clear ideas about where the show was going from the very beginning. Nolan says they told HBO a rough plan for the first three or four seasons when they pitched the show. “I always feel like you want to have a sense,” Nolan says.