The name, J.J. Abrams evokes a lot of emotions in any Star Wars fan. But way before he came on board the Sequel Trilogy, the director was set to work with Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg on their second film after Minority Report. However, things didn’t go as planned.
Abrams is now a feted and acclaimed director. But about two decades back, when he was just starting to make his mark in Hollywood, the writer-director made a choice that shocked many. He left the Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg film to forge his own path. But did his gamble ultimately pay off?
J.J. Abrams Left Major Tom Cruise And Steven Spielberg Film For Lost
In 2005, after making Minority Report, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise teamed up to adapt H. G. Wells’ 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds in a new way. IMDb reports that Cruise and Spielberg asked J.J. Abrams to pen down the script. However, the director turned down the opportunity and prioritized working on his Lost TV series.
Spielberg and Cruise then got Josh Friedman to write the screenplay for War of the Worlds. Later on, David Koepp came in to rewrite it. Koepp changed multiple things about the film, like keeping a singular narrator all because he wanted “a very limited point of view, from someone on the very periphery of events rather than someone involved in events.” He also didn’t use cliches like the destruction of major landmarks by aliens. Spielberg did accept the script, but he made several changes to it.
For one, he didn’t want aliens to arrive in spaceships since that had been done to death. Also, he changed the origins of the destructive Martian tripods, ensuring that they were now found on Earth, buried underground. These changes worked since the movie collected a whopping $603 million at the box office against a budget of $132 million. But what about J.J. Abrams’ Lost?
The Success Of Lost And J.J. Abrams’ Teamup With Tom Cruise
J.J. Abrams is credited as one of the executive producers and creators of Lost. The series has received about 50 Emmy Nominations in total. It won the 2005 Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series and J.J. Abrams took home the Emmy for best direction for the episodes titled Pilot, Part 1 and Pilot, Part 2.
Apart from this, the show enjoyed a dedicated fan following and became a landmark show that changed the way TV shows were seen forever. So it doesn’t look like J.J. Abrams committed a fatal mistake by not choosing War of the Worlds. Also, he got another chance to work with Tom Cruise when he made his feature directorial debut with Mission Impossible 3.
Read More: Tom Cruise Made a Gargantuan $130M Salary for 2005 Steven Spielberg Movie That Never Got a Sequel
The Hollywood Reporter also stated that it was J.J. Abrams who revived the then waning franchise. The site wrote, “Abrams and Bad Robot’s involvement would reframe what a Mission: Impossible movie could be, and establish a tone and narrative template that made the franchise what it is today. Without it, there would be no Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, or Fallout — three of the genre’s greatest films.”
Tom Cruise is now rolling out his 7th Mission Impossible film this year and J.J. Abrams is busy helming a film adaptation of Stephen King’s 2021 novel Billy Summers for WB.
War of the Worlds and Lost are both available on Amazon Prime Video.
