JJ Abrams is returning to television.
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The Hollywood Reporter reports that Abrams is shopping around a space drama. The pitch is his first television creation since Fringe in 2008.
The report suggests HBO and Apple are among those interested in the script. Abrams is an executive producer on HBO’s sci-fi series Westworld. Apple recently ordered a space-set drama from Star Trek alum Ronald D. Moore.
Abram’s pitch is reportedly about a family. The family consists of a mother who works as a scientist, her husband, and their daughter. The entire family gets into a car crash that leaves the mother in a coma. The daughter investigates her mother’s experiments and ends up transported to another world. That world is consumed by a war against an oppressive force. The father follows after his daughter.
Abrams’ previous television creations include Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe. He wrote the new project’s script. His banner, Bad Robot Productions, will produce.
While this will be Abrams’ first television creation in years, he has been an active TV producer since then. Recently he’s been an executive producer on HBO’s Westworld, Showtime’s Roadies, CBS’ Person of Interest, and Hulu’s 11.22.63. He has Stephen King’s Castle Rock on deck.
Abrams has become one of the biggest genre directors working. In 2008 he directed the monster movie Cloverfield. He then directed the Star Trek reboot in 2009 and its 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness. He relaunched the Star Wars franchise at Disney with Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. He’ll return to that franchise in 2019 to direct Star Wars: Episode IX.
Abrams says he had no intention of coming back to direct another Star Wars but hopes now to improve upon his first.
“I had no intention to return,” Abrams explained. “But when the opportunity presented itself to finish a story that we had begun with these new characters, to tell the last chapter of their story, it felt like there was a chance to do it in a way where we could go beyond, and do better than we did in [Episode VII].
“I learned so much in that movie and I saw that this was a chance to sort of realize something that we hadn’t quite achieved – and part of that was it was simply the beginning of these new characters and their story. The opportunity to sort of take what we had learned, to take the feeling of who these characters are and what they are and give them a final chapter that felt in the spirit of what we begun? It was too delicious of an opportunity to pass up.”
