The downsizing of JJ Abrams’ evil robot
How the mighty robot failed.
JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot production banner is downsizing, moving to New York after more than 20 years in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The trimming of the sails comes amid a particularly difficult period for Bad Robot, with several ambitious projects seeing high-wattage talent given a hard pass or stuck in development hell.
Most recently, these included a “Justice League Dark” series that would tie in with shows built around DC characters; ‘Overlook’, a prequel to ‘The Shining’; and the crime drama “Duster.” Abrams also received a series order from HBO Max in 2021 for the thriller “Subject to Change.”
Of those projects, only “Duster” has been on the air for one season. Bad Robot also produced the animated series “Batman: Caped Crusader,” which was set up at HBO Max before being scrapped and later sold to Amazon. Then there was the planned big-budget fantasy vehicle for HBO, “Demimonde,” which had a series order attached and stars Danielle Deadwyler. But by the end of 2022, it was axed due to David Zaslav’s cost-cutting campaign at Warner Bros. and HBO.
The film production of Bad Robot was mediocre. It was seven years ago that Abrams took up the mantle of “Star Wars” and delivered “The Rise of Skywalker,” a billion-dollar gross that cost about half that to make. The gap has since been filled with leftfield documentaries like “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” and streaming actioners like “Lou.”
The bespectacled Abrams will finally reemerge this year as producer of Anne Hathaway’s “The End of Oak Street” and director of Glen Powell’s “The Great Beyond,” both at Warner Bros.
Bad Robot representatives declined to comment.
Bad Robot’s belt-tightening reflects sharp changes in the market for top producers in the years since COVID and the 2023 strikes. Studios and streamers have cut back on long-term, big-budget deals meant to produce the next “Seinfeld” or “Stranger Things.” Those rich eight-figure pacts became status benchmarks for the busiest showrunner-producers in the 1990s and 2000s (think Dick Wolf, Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes), but are now quickly disappearing.
A-list talent still has eye-popping rewards. But the deals are being made on a project-by-project basis, rather than through the older model of pacts, which involved doling out millions in development funds and compensation over three or four years. Those deals could be rationalized in an era when a deal the size of “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Two and a Half Men” could net a studio more than $500 million in syndication profits. But streaming has changed all that, meaning there’s less generosity in the system flowing to talent above the line.
But there was a time when it was.
In 2006, Bad Robot was at the forefront of jaw-dropping deal-making by studios eager to lock hotshot multi-hyphenates into exclusive contracts. And Abrams was positively volcanic in mid-2006. He had revived Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible” dreams after writing and directing “M:I 3” that year. His ABC series “Lost” pushed creative boundaries, drew huge Nielsen numbers and defied FYC gravity as a genre show whose first season won the best drama Emmy.
In the midst of this perfect storm, Abrams’ agents struck two very rich deals: one for film (at Paramount Pictures) and one for TV (at Warner Bros. Television). The pacts were unveiled the same day (July 14, 2006) for maximum impact.
Abrams bought a building in Santa Monica and wanted to turn Bad Robot into a next-generation content factory. In 2020, Bad Robot took advantage of another moment to land a Megabucks renewal deal with WBTV – but momentum has noticeably slowed within the once utopian Bad Robot offices (complete with a private chef and movie stars working in residence).
Insiders close to Abrams and Katie McGrath, his wife and co-CEO, note that the couple had been looking to “downsize” the operation for some time. While their move to New York is confusing to some — the couple recently completed an extensive renovation of a home in the LA power enclave of Rustic Canyon — a source with knowledge of Abrams says he no longer wants to play the mogul.
“JJ is a tinkerer,” the source said. “He wants to start making things again.”
Cynthia Littleton contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared in the April 8 print issue of Variety.
