Is 'Westworld' HBO's next big hit?

On the morning they finished shooting the pilot for "Westworld," the married showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy commandeered a golf cart and went for a drive around Sweetwater, the Old West town they built for the show on Gene Autry's former ranch studio in Santa Clarita, California.

"The sun filtered through everything, and it was this beautiful moment," Joy recalled recently. "For once, there was nowhere to rush, the pages were shot. We rode through that town together, and we were done with this massive endeavor."

In fact, they were just getting started. Still to come were nine more episodes of this audacious science-fiction western; production delays that would cast doubt on the show's future; and, as its Sunday, Oct. 2, premiere date was finally announced, the pressure of reviving HBO's drama slate as "Game of Thrones," another high-concept epic with lots of violence and naked people, enters its twilight.

Based on the 1973 Michael Crichton film, "Westworld" is about a dark Disneyland where the wealthy can wallow in incredibly lifelike Old West fantasy, shooting or sleeping with whomever they choose. The objects of their depredations are humanoid robot "hosts" who believe themselves to be actual gunslingers, brothel madams and ranchers' daughters. That is until flickers of memory and insight threaten to reveal that the hosts were actually built by puppet-master scientists, a programmer explains, to "gratify the desires of the people who pay to visit your world." Myriad awakenings, reckonings and complex existential conflicts ensue.

The series is the result of a longtime fascination with the film by J.J. Abrams, a creator of "Lost," the director of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and the executive producer who hired Nolan and Joy to reimagine the story. A show of imposing sweep, thorny philosophical quandaries and an impressive cast including Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright and Evan Rachel Wood, it is also HBO's most visually ambitious offering since "Game of Thrones," a global hit that remains the network's last successful drama, even though it debuted in 2011.

HBO doesn't expect "Game of Thrones"-type ratings (the most recent season finale drew 8.9 million viewers), but it hopes "Westworld" can end a five-year slide defined by minor-key curiosities like "The Leftovers" and expensive failures like "Vinyl," the 1970s music business show that was canceled in June after its first season. While one-off miniseries like this summer's "The Night Of" have done well for HBO, "what we need is an ongoing drama series," said Casey Bloys, the network's president for programming.)

Early reviews have been mostly raves, praising the transportive quality and sophisticated themes about human nature and consciousness. And the performances, especially from Wood, Hopkins as the possibly malevolent mastermind Dr. Robert Ford and Newton as the madam Maeve, are nuanced and layered.

"The show has taken a premise that could be seen as sort of primitive and simply about revenge and explored it on an emotionally complex level," Abrams said.

He had been pondering a "Westworld" reboot off and on since discussing the concept more than 20 years ago with Crichton, who died in 2008. But Nolan, who goes by Jonah, and Joy weren't interested in taking on big television projects in 2013, when Abrams proposed reimagining it as a cable drama. Nolan, who had worked on films like "Interstellar," "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Memento" with his brother Christopher before creating the CBS series "Person of Interest," hoped to direct feature films. Joy, who wrote for shows like "Burn Notice" and "Pushing Daisies," was developing a movie version of "Battlestar Galactica."

Ultimately, they were drawn in by the chance to explore issues surrounding artificial intelligence and "the idea that humans are getting ever better at immersing themselves in their narrative fictions," Nolan said.