J.J. Abrams Thought His Career Was Over After Rejecting This Steven Spielberg Job Opportunity
Steven Spielberg has inspired many filmmakers over the years, including Star Wars director J.J. Abrams. So when Abrams had to reject a writing opportunity Spielberg gave him, Abrams felt that might’ve been the end of his career.
Steven Spielberg wanted J.J. Abrams to write ‘War of the Worlds’
Abrams missed an opportunity to work with his idol Spielberg earlier in his career. Spielberg was in the midst of developing his War of the Worlds remake at the time. He already found the film’s star in actor Tom Cruise. All he needed to find was a writer to fully flesh out the feature. Spielberg felt Abrams was the talent he was looking for, as the Oscar-winning filmmaker was impressed with other films Abrams had penned.
“At this time in his career, [Abrams] wasn’t yet a director, but a writer, and he was a great writer,” Spielberg once told Entertainment Weekly about Abrams. “He was very witty and he adores plot structure and storytelling.”
Spielberg would decide to meet Abrams in person to talk to him about the picture. But the Star Trek director had his hands full with another sci-fi property back then.
“I brought Tom Cruise over to meet J.J. We were looking for someone to write War of the Worlds and my first choice was to give it to J.J., but he was so involved with Lost that he just didn’t have the time to jump into it. But Tom remembered how impressed he had been with J.J. that he asked him if he would direct Mission: Impossible III,” Spielberg remembered.
Abrams corroborated his brief meeting with Spielberg and Cruise. He remembered being in disbelief that the director and one of Hollywood’s biggest stars would actually contact him for a project.
“I was like, What the hell? None of it made sense. I felt like it was an episode [of] Punk’d. We had this two-hour meeting. I had known Steven for a few years, but it was always an out-of-body experience, and so to compound it with having Cruise on the same sofa, it was freaky,” Abrams said.
But when Abrams’ Lost obligations prevented him from working with Spielberg, he quipped it felt like making a grave career mistake.
“It was really fun, Tom and I got along great, [but] I couldn’t do the movie because I was filming the Lost pilot. I felt like I had just committed career suicide,” Abrams recalled.
J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg would eventually work together for ‘Super 8’
Spielberg and Abrams would later team up for a very different alien movie. The two collaborated on the project Super 8, which was a sci-fi feature about a group of young aspiring filmmakers dealing with a paranormal mystery. The movie was also a love letter to Abrams’ childhood, who directed the feature. One of the first things Abrams did after conceiving the idea was to bring it to the E.T. director.
“I said, ‘Would you want to produce a movie with me about kids making movies like we did?’—because I knew he had done the same thing. He directly said yes, and I was very excited that he was into it. And I didn’t know anything else—I didn’t know what the genre was, I didn’t know who the characters were,” Abrams once told Vanity Fair.
However, Abrams did acknowledge there were always some concerns when collaborating with your idols. If things went south, it could’ve damaged the bond Abrams had with Spielberg at the time. But fortunately, they couldn’t have had a more pleasant experience on the Super 8 set.
“To work with Steven, which was something I always wanted to do, and have it be as educational and rewarding and fun as it was, I feel like I just dodged the biggest bullet in my life. Working with your hero, if it ends badly, it’s a scar for life. So the fact that it ended well was a real relief,” Abrams said in a separate interview with Entertainment Weekly.
