Production on Westworld season 4 pauses due to COVID

While many places around the world are trying to forge ahead as if the coronavirus pandemic is over, unfortunately, nature has ways of reminding us that some things are beyond human control. For instance, Deadline reports that Westworld was forced to shut down production due to a positive COVID test from a member of the production. HBO began production on the fourth season of its sci-fi epic earlier this summer, so it wasn’t even running that long before the network needed to pull the plug.

Luckily, this is anticipated to be only a brief pause. The production had a strict screening process for the virus, so the powers that be were able to identify the infection early and act accordingly. The show will be pausing for two days next week, which…now that I think about it, seems a bit delayed if the test happened this week. But hey, however this process is set up it seems to be working, because at this point these pauses are something that shows are seemingly taking in stride.

Because it’s not only Westworld that has been dealing with these delays…

House of the Dragon and Bridgerton paused production over COVID

We’ve also recently learned that American Horror Story, Bridgerton, and even House of the Dragon have all had to take similarly brief pauses this summer, presumably to re-sterilize everything and re-test everyone associated with the shows after a positive COVID test. There can be no doubt that this sort of thing has had an effect on how fast these shows are being produced, and you know that studios wouldn’t be shutting down production if there was another option. How much money does it cost them to do that?

To my eye, it’s to the credit of the various productions that they are tackling things so effectively. Beyond requiring that everyone on set be vaccinated, there’s no real way for studios to truly ensure that the coronavirus won’t rear its ugly head and muck up their plans. The best they can do is react accordingly to keep everyone involved in these shows safe. And hopefully, that is exactly what they are doing.

When last we saw Evan Rachel Wood, Aaron Paul, Thandiwe Newton, and the rest of the Westworld cast, humanity was just turning over a new leaf as a species freshly liberated from the confines of a sophisticated life path-defining AI. Details on season 4 are scarce, so it’ll likely be a while yet before we get any more info about what to expect in the saga’s next chapter.

Provided that there are no other COVID-related hiccups, production on Westworld is planned to start back up next week.

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