With his longtime production studio, Bad Robot, at a crossroads, J.J. Abrams appeared at Warner Bros.’ CinemaCon presentation to unveil his upcoming supernatural thriller “The Great Beyond,” starring Glen Powell, Jenna Ortega and Samuel L. Jackson.
It is also his first original film since “Super 8” in 2011, having worked in the years since on “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.”
“I really felt like I needed to get back to telling original stories, which is where I started, and is the thing that I am most passionate about,” Abrams said. “And the seed of this idea came to me years ago. It took a long time to write it, partly because of extensive world building, but also because I didn’t want it to just be one thing, not just a thriller or a mystery or sci-fi.”
In the film’s trailer, we see a computer type up a quote by H.G. Wells: “There is, though I do not know how there is or how it may be, another world out of sight and sound.”
In a voiceover, we hear Jenna Ortega’s character talking about how there are some people who are looking for “something pure…something we can’t find here.” Then we hear Glen Powell promising an adventure into another world that “we can’t even begin to fathom.”
“The Great Beyond” comes as Bad Robot has sold its Santa Monica headquarters to relocate to smaller offices in New York. As TheWrap reported last week, Bad Robot reupped its production deal with Warner Bros. in 2024 for significantly less money than in 2019 amidst several cancelled and rejected projects, including an animated “Batman” series that was moved to Prime Video after Warner Bros. lost interest amidst the reorganization of DC media into a single label, DC Studios, run by James Gunn and Peter Safran.
But Abrams will add to the recent streak of original films that Warner Bros. has put out and will put out, including Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Alejandro Inarritu’s “Digger.” Abrams said onstage that he didn’t know whether anyone would truly like this world he was conjuring up and expressed his gratitude to Warner Bros. chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy for believing in the project.
“This film…it’s about a lot, but at the heart of the movie, it’s about reconnecting with that sense of wonder and possibility that we had when we were kids, which I think a lot of people over time get eaten out of them and sort of lose. And it’s about protecting that belief in yourself,” Abrams said.
