J.J. Abrams Shopping Jonah Nolan's First TV Series
J.J. Abrams is one busy dude. One would think he'd be spending his time prepping his upcoming monster movie/Spielberg tribute Super 8—and he is—but it's hard to imagine how he has time to do that when all he seems to be doing is helping get other people's ideas off the ground.The Ausiello Files is reporting that Abrams is currently shopping an untitled crime-thriller series created by Jonathan Nolan, brother of Christopher Nolan. Jonah is the co-writer of The Dark Knight and The Prestige (alongside Christopher), and he also wrote the original short story upon which Memento was based. This project will mark his first foray into television.
Not much else is known about the project—well, nothing, actually—but then, should we expect anything less from an Abrams production? All that's being shared at this point is that one network is "extremely interested" in the series, which doesn't really tell us anything about the show's future that we couldn't have already predicted. J.J. Abrams has gotten to the point where, if he wants to develop a movie or TV series, he has the power to make it happen, and it's the studios that are the ones that need to sell him on who gets it.
On the feature film front, Jonah has the screenplay for the final film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy in the pipeline, and may have his Interstellar script directed by Steven Spielberg—which, with Abrams and Super 8, just about brings this creative team-up full circle.
Abrams, meanwhile, is moving projects left and right. He's helping adapt a Victorian-era robot movie called Boilerplate; he's rumored to be producing a film for The Host and Mother director Bong Joon-ho; he's developing a thriller titled 7 Minutes in Heaven for Lost director Jack Bender; and he's pushing a TV drama series entitled Alcatraz, written by Lost writer/producer Elizabeth Sarnoff. And that's just the half of it.