By J.J. Abram is so hot right now.
Well, to be more precise, Bad Robot, the production company that he and Katie McGrath run, is so hot right now. And WarnerMedia has decided they’re possibly $500 million worth of hotness. THR is reporting that the company is the final winner of a month long bidding war for Bad Robot’s content and creators, and analysts believe that it could reach up to that magic number. There’s no details of how long the contract will be, but under the rumored terms Abram’s will continue to produce and create television content with Warner TV, as he’s done since 2006, but also bring over their film efforts from Viacom/Paramount.
Everyone wanted this contract as being able to put Abram’s name on something instantly gives you credibility and he has a long history of successes under his belt. Getting Abrams as a director, producer, and overseer is a massive boon to any company. Getting Bad Robot, and it’s ability to make diverse popular content is even better. That’s why basically every media company in Hollywood was taking meetings with the company over the past few months. WarnerMedia was insanely aggressive in trying to keep Abram’s in the fold and bring in his movie content as well. The company just couldn’t lose one of its prized creators, especially as they look to launch their own streaming service and in-house content becomes more and more important.
The interest wasn’t all one-sided, however. Bad Robot was looking for a larger company that had both TV and film distribution efforts. That ruled out a lot of the streaming only companies like Apple and Netflix who were interested. The studio didn’t want its only distribution to TV, and those “smaller” companies don’t have the distribution power that Warner does. That makes a lot of sense as Abrams loves making big movies for tons of money and moving that content to the small screen just doesn’t make sense.
Of course, this doesn’t preclude the prolific director from not working with other companies. He’s still heavily involved with Disney’s Star Wars as he wraps up Episode IX, and he’s working on plenty of other projects. However, as companies silo themselves more and more you’ll be sure that WB makes every effort to have Abrams created/led content solely on their platforms. If you’re concerned about Bad Robot’s plethora of quality HBO content, including West World, don’t be; HBO is owned by WarnerMedia so we’ll see more of their content on there, not less.
J.J. Abrams Bidding War Won By WarnerMedia as Bad Robot Nears $500M Partnership [THR]
