How a powerful robot became weaker.
After spending more than 20 years in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production banner is winding down operations and relocating to New York. This trimming of sails comes at a particularly difficult time for Bad Robot, where several ambitious projects featuring high-wattage talent have stalled or fallen into development hell.
Most recently, it included the “Justice League Dark” series, which tied in with shows built around DC characters. “Overlook” is the first part of “The Shining.” and the crime drama “Duster.” Abrams has also secured a series order for the thriller “Subject to Change” on HBO Max in 2021.
Of these projects, only “Duster” aired for one season. Bad Robot also produced the animated series Batman: Caped Crusader. The series was produced at HBO Max, then scrapped and later sold to Amazon. And HBO’s planned big-budget fantasy vehicle, “Demimonde,” was turned into a series, starring Daniel Deadwyler. However, the project was scrapped by the end of 2022 amid David Zaslav’s cost-cutting campaign at Warner Bros. and HBO.
Bad Robot’s filmography was lackluster. It was seven years ago that Abrams took over the helm of “Star Wars” and delivered “The Rise of Skywalker,” which grossed $1 billion at the box office for about half the cost of making it. Since then, the gap has been filled by left-field documentaries like “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” and streaming action films like “Lou.”
This year, the bespectacled Abrams will finally reappear at Warner Bros. as a producer on Anne Hathaway’s “The End of Oak Street” and as a director on Glen Powell’s “The Great Beyond.”
A representative for Bad Robot declined to comment.
Bad Robot’s tough stance reflects the rapid changes in the market for top producers in the years since the coronavirus and the 2023 strike. Studios and streamers have cut spending on large, long-term contracts aimed at producing the next Seinfeld or Stranger Things. These eight-figure deals were a measure of status for the busiest showrunners and producers of the 1990s and 2000s (think Dick Wolf, Ryan Murphy, and Shonda Rhimes), but they’re rapidly disappearing now.
A-list talent still earns eye-watering salaries. But the deal is on a project-by-project basis, rather than the old agreement model of paying millions of dollars in development funds and compensation over three or four years. Those deals could be streamlined in an era when a movie the size of “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Two and a Half Men” could bring studios more than $500 million in syndication profits. But streaming has changed everything. This means that the system that flows into top talent has become smaller.
But there was a time when that was the case.
In 2006, Bad Robot was at the forefront of a surprising deal by a studio looking to lock up the up-and-coming multi-hyphenate in an exclusive deal. And Abrams was active by mid-2006. He wrote and directed that year’s M:I 3 before reviving Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible dream. His ABC series “Lost” pushed creative boundaries, racked up huge Nielsen numbers, was an FYC gravity-defying genre show and won Best Drama in its first season.
In the midst of this perfect storm, Abrams’ agents signed two very lucrative contracts. One for movies (Paramount Pictures) and one for television (Warner Bros. Television). The agreement was announced on the same day (14 July 2006) for maximum effect.
Abrams bought a building in Santa Monica and set out to turn Bad Robot into a next-generation content factory. In 2020, Bad Robot once again seized the opportunity to sign a huge contract renewal with WBTV, but momentum within Bad Robot’s once utopian office (housed by a personal chef and movie stars) has visibly subsided.
Insiders close to Mr. Abrams and his wife, co-CEO Katie McGrath, say the two have been considering “winding down” the business for some time. While the pivot to New York has upset some people, and the couple just recently completed extensive renovations on their home in Los Angeles’ power enclave Rustic Canyon, a source familiar with Abrams says he no longer intends to play as a mogul.
“JJ is a tinkerer,” the source says. “He wants to go back to making things.”
Cynthia Littleton contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared in the April 8 issue of Variety magazine.
