HBO dropped the trailer for “Westworld” Season 3 during San Diego Comic-Con last week, revealing way more details about the next installment of the sci-fi series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. But the one thing the action-packed video set to Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” didn’t tell fans is when the show will return, beyond that vague “2020” card.
While we still don’t have a premiere date for you, TheWrap does have a more concrete timeframe for readers than an entire calendar year, courtesy of HBO programming chief Casey Bloys.
“First half of 2020,” he told us in an interview during the pay-TV channel’s day at the Television Critics Association Wednesday.
When we asked what familiar faces (including dead ones) we might see in the third season — apart from the confirmed returns of characters like Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), Maeve (Thandie Newton), Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), whoever is inside Charlotte Hale’s body (Tessa Thompson) and The Man in Black (Ed Harris) — like Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Robert Ford, Bloys said: “If you didn’t see them in the trailer, I’m not gonna respond.”
Hmm, we guess you can make of that what you will.
Because Nolan and Joy signed an overall deal with Amazon Studios back in April, leaving their longtime home at Warner Bros TV., fans have wondered if the “Westworld” showrunners might take more of a hands-off approach to future seasons. Bloys tells us we don’t need to worry about that.
“They are 100 percent hands on,” Bloys said. “We have deals with them for a potential fourth and fifth season. So the deal with them [at Amazon] is for, I believe, everything but ‘Westworld.’ And they’re very committed to ‘Westworld.’ So I’m not worried about losing their focus, they don’t lose focus,” he added, laughing.
By the way, Bloys wouldn’t tell us anything about that World War II world you saw in the trailer, or Caleb (the new character played by Aaron Paul), except that he’s excited.