For SXSW this weekend, HBO built an entire town modeled after Westworld. While it wasn’t an exact recreation of Westworld’s hub town, Sweetwater, it did include reproduced versions of locations from the series, like the Mariposa Saloon and the luxury hotel The Coronado. Production on the park started in November, it took a 40-person crew a full five weeks to build, there were 60 actors with a 444-page final script, and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever been to.
Before we get into the specifics, here’s a gallery of locations and actors to give you an idea of what we'll be talking about. Click right to see them all:
At around 1pm yesterday, we headed to the EastSide Tavern in Downtown Austin. HBO didn’t want anyone to know where their recreation of Sweetwater actually was, even though they had been advertising the event on local television, all over SXSW, and it was probably the single most talked about event this weekend. Signs around downtown Austin read “travel to Westworld”, so the line of fans outside the EastSide Tavern had to be hours long. We managed to get through, and for reasons I didn’t understand at the time, the attendants took photos of each of us. We checked in and headed to the top of the tavern to get our hats, which were either white or black depending on some kind of personality test.
Continue reading…
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Before we get into the specifics, here’s a gallery of locations and actors to give you an idea of what we'll be talking about. Click right to see them all:
At around 1pm yesterday, we headed to the EastSide Tavern in Downtown Austin. HBO didn’t want anyone to know where their recreation of Sweetwater actually was, even though they had been advertising the event on local television, all over SXSW, and it was probably the single most talked about event this weekend. Signs around downtown Austin read “travel to Westworld”, so the line of fans outside the EastSide Tavern had to be hours long. We managed to get through, and for reasons I didn’t understand at the time, the attendants took photos of each of us. We checked in and headed to the top of the tavern to get our hats, which were either white or black depending on some kind of personality test.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...