J.J. Abrams

Started by MacGuffin, June 11, 2009, 01:06:25 AM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

MacGuffin

Abrams and Cruise Reuniting for Mission: Impossible 4
Source: SpoilerTV

Star Trek director J.J. Abrams tells TV Guide that he will be producing the fourth "Mission: Impossible" film.

"I am incredibly honored that Tom has invited me back as a producer on 'Mission: Impossible 4,'" said Abrams, who directed 2006's Mission: Impossible III, but hasn't yet committed to directing the fourth.

"Tom and I have come up with a really cool idea we are pursuing," he added.

The third film cost about $150 million to make and earned $397.8 million worldwide. The first pic pulled in $457.7 million worldwide on a $80 million budget and the second took in $546.3 million on a $125 million budget.

Abrams' credits include TV shows "Fringe," "Lost," "Alias" and "Felicity."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

SiliasRuby

understandably awesome!
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

MacGuffin

EXCLUSIVE: J.J. Abrams Says That Tom Cruise Is Part Of The Plan For 'Mission: Impossible IV'
Source: MTV

Last summer, news started to percolate about the IMF returning to the big screen in "Mission: Impossible IV." In the months that followed, more news trickled out. The biggest break was word that "M:I III" writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman would be replaced by "Alias" writer/producers Andre Nemec and Josh Applebaum. A big question still remained however: would star Tom Cruise be back for a fourth helping?

MTV's Josh Horowitz asked producer and "M:I III" director J.J. Abrams that very question on the National Board of Review red carpet two nights ago.

"The goal would be for that to occur," Abrams said, skirting around actually mentioning anyone or anything by name. So Josh pressed him a little.

"If I say the words though-- I've seen what you do," the "Star Trek" director said with a smile. "You warp and twist, you make me say things that just break me down." Turning serious again, Abrams acquiesced. "The goal would be for Tom [Cruise] to be in the film."

What he wouldn't say anything about was the story, other than admitting that there is one. "A script is being written," Abrams said. "There's an insanely long outline, it is probably longer than the script. It's going great... we're very excited and we're looking to make that movie."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Vulture Exclusive: J.J. Abrams' Next Movie Is a Collaboration with Steven Spielberg
Source: NYMag

Vulture has learned that J.J. Abrams has picked his next movie, and it's both a tribute to and a collaboration with Steven Spielberg. An insider tells us that Abrams is just now finishing a script described as "a tip of the hat to [Spielberg's] movies of the 70's and early 80's." We're also told that Abrams plans to "roll up his sleeves and direct the script himself" by early this fall for Paramount Pictures, where he's based. (After, of course, he ends ABC's Lost, oversees Fox's Fringe, launches NBC's Undercovers, and produces Mission: Impossible 4 and a new Rachel McAdams and Harrison Ford comedy, Morning Glory, at Paramount. And then eats breakfast.)

Plot details are top secret - as if there's any other kind of plot detail in Abramsland — but we're told that like Spielberg's Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T., the project will deal with everyday people whose personal relationships are tested when they are thrown up against extraordinarily fantastic - and possibly other-worldly - events. (Could it involve sharks from outer space that befriend young, nerdy children of divorce? Will it find some way to redeem 1941? The mind reels!) Our sources tell us that Abrams is in discussions with Spielberg, and insist the DreamWorks co-founder will be involved in some capacity, whether as an executive producer or at least as an adviser, since "J.J. wants to make sure Steven is properly paid homage to. This is really an interpretation of some of Spielberg's earlier films, but done in a personal way." (Interestingly, in 2005, just before the release of M:I 3, Abrams was attached as a director to The Good Sailor, based on the true story of a seventh grader's obsession with the scene in Jaws when Quint recounts the torpedoing of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.)

We're told Abrams' script does have a name, but like the Abrams-produced 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, the title is being kept under wraps for maximal marketing impact. It will also have a low budget for a studio movie, just like Cloverfield, which cost around $25 million. (It won't, however, be shot in that movie's shaky handheld style: Happily, we're told, you can leave your Dramamine patch at home.) "It's kind of the anti-Avatar," explained one source, "Not that [J.J.] doesn't love that movie or special effects movies - he has a real facility for effects. But he really wants to make this, and the way to do that is to be fiscally responsible."

Finally (and please sit down, because this will surely astonish you), both Paramount and DreamWorks spokespersons denied any knowledge of the new Abrams project.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Pubrick

that's one of the better written news/rumour articles i've read in a while. well done NYMag, enjoyable all the way to the end.

usually these fluff pieces are a chore to get through.

never heard of the good sailor, sounded like a good match for JJA, i can already imagine he would have had me tearing up in the introduction a la star trek. damn you, great storyteller!
under the paving stones.

MacGuffin

J.J. Abrams heist project catches 'Field of Dreams' writer (exclusive)
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Phil Alden Robinson, who wrote and directed "Field of Dreams," has been given the keys to J.J. Abrams' untitled heist project set up at Paramount.

Robinson will write the script for the project, which is based on a Wired magazine article titled "The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist," by Joshua Davis. 

The article, the rights to which Paramount acquired in March 2009, described the true story of an unprecedented diamond heist in Antwerp, Belgium, and the crew that pulled it off. In early 2003, a small group of Italian thieves circumvented 10 layers of security to access a vault beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and make off with a purported $100 million in diamonds, gold and jewelry (the actual value remains a mystery).

During a six-year span, Davis scored a series of interviews with the ringleader, incarcerated in a Belgian prison, who finally divulged how it was done. Davis acquired the subject's life rights in the process.

Abrams is producing via his Bad Robot banner along with Circle of Confusion.

Robinson knows a thing or two about heists, having written and directed "Sneakers," the 1992 Robert Redford thriller about a group of people specializing in testing security systems by breaking into banks and buildings.

Robinson, who is writing the heist project but not directing at this stage, was nominated for an Oscar for penning "Dreams" and is working on the Frank Sinatra biopic for Universal and Mandalay. He is repped by WME.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Fox, Abrams head to 'Alcatraz'
Net gives a pilot committment to the project
Source: Variety

Fox has locked up a deal for J.J. Abrams' "Alcatraz."

Network gave a pilot commitment to the project, which started out as a spec script from scribe Elizabeth Sarnoff ("Lost"). Fox scooped up the project that had drawn interest from other nets.

"Alcatraz" reps the latest in a long line of TV and feature projects set in the infamous prison shut down in 1963. Facility was once home to Al Capone, among other famous criminals.

Sarnoff will exec produce with Abrams and Bryan Burk; Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt are co-exec producers. Warner Bros. TV, where Abrams' Bad Robot shingle is based, is the studio.

Abrams is already in business with Fox via "Fringe." Bad Robot's next series, "Undercovers," bows next Wednesday on NBC. Both "Fringe" and "Undercovers" also began as specs.

Sarnoff's other credits include "Deadwood," "Crossing Jordan" and "NYPD Blue."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Stefen

You know what? I kind of liked the solar flares in Star Trek.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

MacGuffin

NBC lands new J.J. Abrams project
'Lost' co-stars Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn in leads
Source: THR

J.J. Abrams' newest project has landed at NBC.

Ahead of its "Undercovers" premiere Wednesday, the network has made a pilot commitment to a new series starring "Lost" actors Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn, New York Magazine's Vulture reports.

According to the report, there was heavy interest from rival broadcast networks.

Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec will be writing and executive producing, while Abrams and Bryan Burk will also serve as exec producers.

Details on the series have not yet been released, though it was reported that the pair would be playing ex-black-ops agents.

Emerson confirmed to THR in an interview that he and O'Quinn were shopping around ideas for a new television series earlier this year.

"It's real. Real people and real writers are batting it around," he said in late August.

This marks NBC's second Abrams project.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

wilder

J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot To Develop Rod Serling's Final Screenplay Into Event Series
via Deadline

Thirty eight years after Rod Serling's death, his final screenplay is heading to the screen. J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Prods. has acquired the rights to The Twilight Zone creator's unproduced last feature script The Stops Along The Way. The project will be developed into an event limited series through Bad Robot's deal at Warner Bros. TV and taken out into the marketplace. Details about the premise are being kept under wraps. Serling talked about the project in his final interview four months before his death when he was asked if he had a script he has special feeling for. "I just wrote The Stops Along The Way, which is, I think, a lovely script," he said.

Emmy and Golden Globe winner Serling wrote and produced a number of TV and feature screenplays, including Rod Serling's Night Gallery, Planet Of The Apes, and Requiem For A Heavyweight, but he is best known for his Twilight Zone anthology series, which was just named one of the top five Best Written TV Series of all time by the Writers Guild of America, West. A reboot of the TV classic is in the works at CBS TV Studios with X-Men director Bryan Singer at the helm.Event/limited series are red-hot at the moment, with four greenlighted in the past month alone, Fox's 24: Live Another Day and Wayward Pines, FX's Fargo and HBO's Criminal Justice. Bad Robot has four series on the air next season, returning Revolution and Person Of Interest and upcoming Almost Human and Believe. Code Entertainment, which reps the Serling Estate, made the deal with Bad Robot.

MacGuffin

HBO to Remake 'Westworld' With Jonathan Nolan, J.J. Abrams
Jerry Weintraub shepherding adaptation of 1973 Yul Brynner cult classic with Bad Robot, WBTV
Source: Variety

HBO has given a pilot production commitment to Bad Robot and Warner Bros. TV for a series adaptation of the 1973 Yul Brynner cult classic "Westworld," to be written and helmed by Jonathan Nolan.
 
Nolan and TV scribe Lisa Joy, who are married, are set to co-write the pilot script, with Nolan set to direct the pilot.  Nolan and Joy will serve as exec producers with Bad Robot's J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk and Jerry Weintraub. The original pic was written and directed by Michael Crichton.

The HBO rendition of "Westworld" is described as "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin." The pilot production commitment is a big one by HBO's standards, indicated the depth of the pay cabler's interest in the project.

Weintraub has been trying to get a feature remake of "Westworld" off the ground for years — Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached at one point but had to bow out after he became governor of California in 2003. Weintraub has been busy at HBO in recent years, most recently fielding the successful Liberace telepic "Behind the Candelabra."

Original "Westworld" also starred Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as vacationers at an adult-themed amusement park who are tormented by a robot modeled as a Western gunslinger, played by Brynner. A sequel with Brynner, Blythe Danner and Peter Fonda was released in 1976, while CBS tried a small screen spin on the concept, "Beyond Westworld," that lasted three airings in March 1980.

Nolan is heading into his third season as exec producer and showrunner of the CBS drama series "Person of Interest," also from Bad Robot and WBTV. On the film side, Nolan is working on the screenplay for Christopher Nolan's upcoming "Interstellar." The brothers previously teamed on the B.O. smashes "The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Rises."

Joy is also developing a drama project with Bryan Fuller for USA Network. Her past TV credits include Fuller's "Pushing Daisies" and USA's "Burn Notice."

Bad Robot's Kathy Lingg is on board "Westworld" as a co-exec producer; Athena Wickham will produce.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks