In September 2019, it was announced that J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company had entered into a massive development deal with WarnerMedia, which was reported to be worth a whopping $250 million, if not a whole lot more.
Eyebrows were raised at the time, but the filmmaker and his cohorts had a penchant for delivering critical and commercial success on screens both big and small through their involvement in such brands as Star Wars, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, the Cloverfield franchise, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest, and plenty more besides.
However, fast forward three years, and Abrams has delivered pretty much nothing. Warner Bros. haven’t released any features bearing the Bad Robot branding, while the only episodic venture to emerge was Lovecraft Country, which found itself canceled after a single (albeit hugely popular) season.
Now that Abrams’ Madame X and Constantine shows have been scrapped, they’ve joined Batman: Caped Crusader and Demimonde on the discard pile, with the future of Duster, Justice League Dark, Zatanna, and the Superman reboot being developed alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates now under intense scrutiny. In fact, fans have been absolutely roasting The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker director online, for effectively taking WB’s money and doing the square root of nothing with it.
New CEO David Zaslav has been wielding the axe with reckless abandon, and we’ve heard reports in the recent past that the recently-installed regime haven’t exactly been thrilled by the severe dearth of Bad Robot output, so we’ll be very curious to see if the bossman tries to find a way to get out of the deal, because it’s stating the obvious to say that Abrams hasn’t delivered.