Westworld creators turning sci-fi novel The Peripheral into Amazon series

Westworld tastemakers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are about to celebrate the season 2 premiere of their hit HBO sci-fi drama, but they also have their sights set on the horizon. The series creators are now turning William Gibson’s 2014 sci-fi novel The Peripheral into a drama series for Amazon.

The streaming service gave a script-to-series order for the project. In other words, if the script is well received, The Peripheral will go straight to series. Nolan and Joy will executive produce with scriptwriter Scott Smith, Steve Hoban, and Athena Wickham. Vincenzo Natali, who directed the “Dissonance Theory” season 1 episode of Westworld, will also direct the pilot and executive produce.

The Peripheral, which landed at Amazon after a competitive situation, envisions a near future where technology has started to subtly alter society. The cryptic logline teases a woman named Flynne Fisher discovering “a hidden connection to a very different reality – and the dark future of her own.”

Gibson, considered the person who coined the term “cyberspace,” had previously mentioned he found inspiration for the book in a news headline about a Christian militia, the film Winter’s Bone, and HBO’s Deadwood. “I wanted the equivalent of the city slickers, from a very different world, turning up in Deadwood,” he told The Guardian. “Initially I thought the other world would be New York or Los Angeles. But at some point, I realized that could be the future.”

Nolan and Joy, meanwhile, certainly have their hands full with Westworld, which enters its second season on April 22 with new characters and environments.

“We don’t like to endlessly build mystery; we like to settle our debts by the end of the season,” Nolan told EW. “We want to feel like the show is rocketing ahead. The first season was a journey inward; this is a journey outward. It’s a search for what else is in the park, and what else is beyond the park.”