“I felt like I had just committed career suicide”: the day JJ Abrams turned down Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise
In 2004, a young filmmaker found himself sitting in a production office opposite Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise. As he gazed in wonder at the two legends of the movie business who were asking him if he wanted to write the War of the Worlds screenplay for them, a horrifying thought flashed into his head. He knew he wouldn’t have time to work on that blockbuster script and would have to turn them down. Was he about to commit career suicide?
Interestingly, the origin of this particular filmmaker’s tale goes back a lot further than 2004. In 1989, JJ Abrams was a college graduate who had just sold his first script in Hollywood. It was called Taking Care Of Business and was in the process of being turned into a James Belushi vehicle by The Walt Disney Company. At that time, Disney and Amblin Entertainment – Spielberg’s production outfit – were putting the feelers out about a potential sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which had been a gargantuan hit in ’88. Abrams was invited to pitch an idea for another Roger Rabbit adventure, and he was on cloud nine when he left the meeting.
Abrams gushed to Entertainment Weekly, “I remember calling Matt Reeves in the car and being just so out of my mind excited that I got completely lost. I had no idea what freeway I had gotten on. I was miles off course. I shouldn’t have been driving, frankly.”
Fast-forward to 1995, and Abrams officially worked with Spielberg for the first time when he did some uncredited script work on Casper, which the iconic director was producing. Spielberg liked the cut of the young scribe’s jib, telling EW, “At this time in his career, [he] wasn’t yet a director, but a writer, and he was a great writer. He was very witty, and he adored plot structure and storytelling.”
Nine years later, Abrams was being courted by Spielberg for writing duties again – and this time, Cruise was there to add extra excitement/pressure. Though Abrams desperately wanted to say “yes” to them, he was already involved in another project set to monopolise his time for years. You may have heard of it – a little television show called Lost, which he co-created with Damon Lindelof and Jeffrey Lieber. Abrams was deep in the weeds of production on that pilot episode at the time – the most expensive pilot in history, no less.
Abrams told EW, “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.”
He said the meeting was fun and formed an instant connection with Cruise, but he knew he had to let the director of Jurassic Park and star of Top Gun down gently. He wondered if he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life, though, and admitted, “I felt like I had just committed career suicide.”
Obviously, Abrams’ career wasn’t doomed by turning down the chance to write War of the Worlds. Scripting duties were eventually taken on by Spider-Man and Mission: Impossible scribe David Koepp, and the movie was a huge hit, grossing $591million worldwide. Cruise remembered how highly he thought of Abrams after the meeting and roped him into making his directorial debut with Mission: Impossible III.
Abrams and Spielberg also stayed in contact, with the iconic director being instrumental in convincing Abrams to reboot Star Trek in 2009. Abrams smiled, “Whether it’s been with Mission or Star Trek, Steven has been sort of been my consigliere.” They then teamed up again for Abrams’ ridiculously Amblin-esque Super 8 in 2011, which Spielberg co-produced.
