Abrams to Produce Wunderkind

JJ Abrams seems to enjoy being an Executive Producer as he has signed on for a third film with Paramount. The film is called Wunderkind written by Patrick Aison. It is set in the 1970s as it follows a CIA and Mossad Nazi hunters who are forced to work together. In the last few weeks Abrams has signed on for God Particle and an untitled spec script. Abrams is currently working on completing the Star Trek sequel but this is unlikely to interfere with that.

Keep in mind that the Executive Producer is kind of like the CEO of a film. His job isn't the day to day decisions. Those are delegated to those with "Producer" credits that are not stars on the films. His main role is to interface with the studio, bring legitimacy to a product (think "from Steven Spielberg..." type lines you see in movie ads), approve the director (and sometimes the cast) while providing comments and ideas on the script with the occasional set visit when production starts. It’s a low time commitment but high paying role as often the executive producer gets a piece of the profits. Really if your goal is to make as much money as possible, this is what you eventually want to devote most of your time to (again see Steven Spielberg) as get credit for making films while not involved in all the time consuming minutiae that is involved in getting a film made.

Abrams Producing God Particle

Variety is reporting that JJ Abrams is set to produce God Particle written by Oren Uziel (The Kitchen Sink). The story is a stuck in space story when a crew must figure out how to survive after an experiment with the hadron accelerator causes the Earth to vanish. A European spacecraft is spotted but the crew doesn't know if they are friend or foe. Paramount wants to film the picture for around $5 million under their Insurge Pictures division they just created for "micro-budget" movies. Basically Paramount is hoping for the profit margins of Paranormal Activity. Abrams will not direct (to expensive). Frankly this sounds like one of those boring atmosphere movies that have killed horror for these last few years. The term is mine as it means the movie has so little meat on the bone that they spin their wheels for most of the movie trying to build suspense with fake-outs that by the time you get to the pay-off you are too bored to care. Hopefully Abrams will bring a higher quality to the story.