J.J. Abrams may not be very popular in some quarters online after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (a so-called franchise-ender that didn’t even kill the prospect of more sequels), but he remains an effective producer and filmmaker, and while he’s been serving as a producer, he’s ready to return to the director’s chair. Now, we’re starting to get a sense of who will be joining him.
Via Deadline, we’ve discovered that Wednesday and Beetlejuice 2 star Jenna Ortega is in advanced negotiations to join the series, alongside Twister and Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell, another name we’ve been hearing repeatedly lately.
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It’s no surprise that top actors would want to work with Abrams, who directed two Star Trek and two Star Wars movies and successfully reinvigorated the Mission: Impossible franchise and Super 8, not to mention his many TV accomplishments and everything he helped accomplish with Bad Robot. Like it or not, he’s still a huge star in Hollywood, and rising stars like Ortega and Powell have little to lose by working with him to (most likely) make a crowd-pleasing movie.
So what exactly will Abrams’ new film be about? Some old rumors pointed to him working on a time-travel movie, but Deadline refuted that idea. There’s also the possibility that he’s choosing to focus on adapting Stephen King’s Billy Summers novel; Powell recently played a hitman, after all. But the truth is, everyone is just scanning Bad Robot’s recent public events (of which there haven’t been a lot) to try to guess what the fun-loving filmmaker is up to.
The casting of these two leads suggests that Warner Bros. and Bad Robot aren’t planning on making this a low-budget or mid-sized film, but Abrams may want to return to a simpler style for his first post-Star Wars film, perhaps to safely win back some trust with casual audiences and critics. However, he’s known for his love of genre films and nostalgic stories, so we wouldn’t be surprised if this is another homage to a beloved classic, or a secret new installment in an existing series. Stay tuned, because this is bound to be one of the most anticipated Hollywood big-screen projects in the coming months.
