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J.J. Abrams is finally making his post-Star Wars comeback with Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega in 2025
The man behind Super 8, Lost, and more is back at it with a new mystery box movie featuring some of Hollywood's biggest names
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It’s been five years since the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and in that period, J.J. Abrams — once a dominant voice in genre pop culture as a writer, director, and producer — has been… almost entirely absent. Expect that to change soon, with the news that he’s making a new movie… and it’s going to feature a lot of very familiar faces.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Samuel L. Jackson is in talks to join the cast of the untitled movie, which already has Glen Powell, Jenna Ortega, and Emma Mackey attached. In what is a welcome callback to Abrams’ past, the new movie is another of Abrams’ so-called “mystery boxes” — which is to say, no-one knows anything about the project beyond the fact that it exists, and that Abrams wrote the screenplay and will be directing the feature. At one point, the movie was rumored to be a time travel story, but sources have apparently pushed back on that idea.
Previous “mystery box” projects produced by Abrams have included 2008’s Cloverfield, 2011’s Super 8, and the 2013 novel S, written by Doug Dorst and based on a concept by Abrams.
Since the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — which was savaged by fans and critics alike, and arguably underperformed at the box office — Abrams has been almost entirely absent in the larger pop culture sphere. Outside of co-producing Prime Video’s Batman: Caped Crusader and an animated adaptation of the children’s book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, he’s been faced with a number of cancelled projects at Warner Bros. Discovery, including a DC adaptation (Justice League Dark), a Stephen King adaptation (Overlook, based on the mythology of The Shining), and an original series titled Demimonde.
The new feature will also be coming from Warner Bros, as part of Abrams’ overall deal with the company. It’s expected to shoot in Spring 2025. Maybe by that point, we’ll have some idea what it’s all about. (Probably not; they're called "mystery boxes" for a reason.)
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