A fun piece of trivia: one of J.J. Abrams’ first professional gigs was writing the music for Don Dohler’s 1982 horror cheapie “Nightbeast.” Dohler, as B-movie fans might know, is the creative mind behind “The Alien Factor” and “Galaxy Invader,” movies that were filmed mostly in the woods. Abrams has since become one of the preeminent makers of big-budget mainstream blockbusters (he has directed one “Mission: Impossible” movie, two “Star Trek” movies, and two “Star Wars” movies), so it’s fun to picture him as a teen handing over tapes to a hard-working schlockmeister like Dohler.
Abrams stuck with it, though, and eventually sold a film treatment to screenwriter Paul Mazursky when he was still in college. That treatment became Arthur Hiller’s 1990 comedy “Taking Care of Business” with Jim Belushi. Abrams continued to rise through the ranks of Tinseltown from there, penning the scripts for films like “Regarding Henry,” “Forever Young,” and, uh, “Gone Fishin’.” By the early 2000s, Abrams had enough clout to launch his own studio and co-created the hit spy series “Alias.” 2004 then saw the debut of an even more successful Abrams creation with “Lost,” transforming him into a permanent Hollywood fixture.
Around the time he was developing the script for the “Lost” pilot, though, Abrams got the kind of phone call most Hollywood types dream of receiving. It turned out that Steven Spielberg was angling to make a modern redux of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” and wanted Abrams to write the screenplay. As he explained in a 2011 profile in Vanity Fair, Abrams was flattered yet had the moxie to turn Spielberg down, preferring to focus all his attention on “Lost” instead.
J.J. Abrams passed on the Tom Cruise-led War of the Worlds
Know that Spielberg wasn’t cold-calling Abrams. The two had a previous working relationship thanks to some restoration work Abrams had previously done. It seems that Abrams, when he was only about 13 years old, was given reels of Spielberg’s old 8mm film shorts and had cleaned them up. Later, in 1995, Abrams was brought on board the Spielberg-produced live-action film adaptation of “Casper,” on which he did punch-up and uncredited re-writes.
Spielberg never forgot Abrams and likely witnessed the young man’s subsequent rise through Hollywood. By the early 2000s, Spielberg knew what he was capable of as a filmmaker and felt he would do well to adapt Wells’ classic novel. Abrams, however, wasn’t available due to his commitment to writing the “Lost” pilot, which required his full attention. It’s worth recalling that the pilot for “Lost” was one of the most expensive in TV history at the time. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly (transcribed by Far Out), Abrams once recalled the experience he had taking a meeting with Spielberg and “War of the Worlds” star Tom Cruise, stating:
“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.”
After he declined the gig, Abrams admitted, “I felt like I had just committed career suicide.”
Spielberg ultimately hired his frequent collaborator David Koepp to write “War of the Worlds” instead. Meanwhile, Abrams and Cruise stayed in touch, with the actor eventually hiring Abrams to co-write and direct “Mission: Impossible III” in 2006. Then, in 2011, Spielberg served as a co-producer on Abrams’ directorial effort “Super 8,” so it all came together in the end. Abrams may have missed out on working on “War of the Worlds,” but one could argue that he ended with the more desirable projects.
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