J.J. Abrams

The screenwriter who didn't want to wait

Jeffrey Jacob Abrams began by selling a film treatment at age fifteen. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it got Hollywood studios to take note of his name. In 1991 he signed the screenplay for Henry's Crime, and Harrison Ford worked under his direction in Mike Nichols.

It was his first real contact with the power of the industry.

Then came the high-voltage assignments. He wrote Forever Young and worked on the script for Armageddon in 1998. That experience taught him how the machinery of big-budget filmmaking worked. But film felt too small for the stories he wanted to branch out into.

In 1998, he co-founded Bad Robot with Bryan Burk. They didn't want to be just another production company in Los Angeles. With Felicity he showed he understood young audiences, but the change in tone came with Alias in 2001. Jennifer Garner ran around in colorful wigs while the espionage plot grew denser and denser.

The explosion of mystery

The real earthquake came in 2004 with the premiere of Lost. The pilot episode cost more than $10 million and nearly got ABC executives fired. The series changed the way people watched television and sparked a global obsession with theories online.

And the gamble paid off.

Tom Cruise personally asked him to direct Mission: Impossible III in 2006. It was his debut behind the camera for a feature film. The style was nervous and direct. The film grossed $398 million despite analysts' initial doubts about his lack of technical experience in action cinema.

In 2009 he revived Star Trek for a generation that barely remembered the original characters. He used constant lens flares and a frantic pace that annoyed purists. But the box office proved him right, with $385 million in worldwide earnings.

Abrams became the go-to person for rescuing other people's franchises.

In 2011 he shot Super 8 as a love letter to the movies of his childhood. It was his most personal project and was produced by Steven Spielberg. The film revived the aesthetics of the 1980s before nostalgia became a mass-market trend.

The weight of the galaxy

Disney handed him the keys to its biggest intellectual property in 2015. Star Wars: The Force Awakens broke pre-sale records worldwide. The director chose to return to practical effects and real sets to move away from the cold digital look of the earlier prequels. The film topped $2,000 million at the global box office.

But his return in 2019 with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was different. Critics were divided, and the production went through constant changes of direction in the script. He closed the trilogy with solid financial results, but a section of the audience was unhappy with the final creative decisions.

In 2019, he signed an exclusive deal with WarnerMedia worth $250 million. The agreement covered films, series and video games under the Bad Robot banner. Some projects, such as the series Demimonde, were canceled in 2022 due to the excessive budget the production demanded.

In 2024, his production company was developing Duster for the streaming platform Max. The company's headquarters remains in a Santa Monica building with no exterior signage that hints at its work. Rent for that tech bunker costs about $200,000 a month.