J.J. Abrams Returns to Sci-Fi Television With a New, Female-Led Creation All His Own
It's about damn time.
J.J. Abrams is co-writing and directing Star Wars: Episode IX, and continues to Executive Produce on HBO’s Westworld. However, he certainly didn’t create Star Wars, and Westworld, which is based on a Michael Crichton film, was created for TV by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. It’s been eight years since the last show he created and wrote, and 11 years since the last sci-fi show he created and wrote. Now, he’s finally returning to the original sci-fi television that made him.
As reported by /Film, Abrams is currently shopping around a new, original sci-fi show to potential homes like Warner Bros. TV, Apple, and HBO. The untitled spec script being shopped tells the story of a family — a scientist mother, her husband, and their young daughter — who all get into a terrible car crash.
“After the mother winds up in a coma, her daughter begins digging through her experiments in the basement and winds up being transported to another land amid a world’s battle against a monstrous, oppressive force. Her father then follows her into this new world.”
I’m thrilled that this not only centers a female character, but has the girl’s mother be the scientist whose work she’s following. As I’ve written about before, the projects that have come out of Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions all seem to deal very much with characters’ “daddy issues:” wanting to have a better relationship with dad, wanting to please dad, whereas mother love is expected and taken for granted with rare exceptions.
Of course, the character’s relationship with her dad will certainly play a big role, what with him following her into this world. However, it’s her mother that will guide and inspire her, and whom she’ll no doubt be trying to emulate. That’s so important. Here’s hoping they’re a family of color.
*gasp* Maybe they could even be Latinx! I’m just saying, Latinx can be scientists, and we can’t have The Flash‘s Cisco holding it down for everybody.
The last show that Abrams created and wrote episodes for was 2010’s short-lived spy drama Undercovers, which starred Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Boris Kodjoe as a married couple who just so happen to be CIA agents. Before that, Abrams created and wrote episodes for Fringe which, in my opinion, was some of the best and most entertaining sci-fi on television.
And of course, there’s Lost, which he wasn’t involved in for very long, but in the time he was there managed to come up with many of the ideas that made the show what it is. (I’m not here to have a Lost fight, but I will fight you if you talk trash about the Lost ending which, PS, Abrams had little to do with.)
I love Abrams’ films, but whereas his films so far have often been homages to other people’s films, it’s in television that Abrams has been truly groundbreaking. I’m really looking forward to seeing this show, wherever it ends up.
Though if it ends up being an Apple show, I might have to throw things. Stop trying to do everything, Apple! Just focus on giving me a phone with a damn headphone jack!
(image: stock_photo_world/Shutterstock)
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