J.J. Abrams Makes a Disaster Movie

Published by Jeff Leins on: August 12th, 2008

Producer J.J. Abrams is planning another movie about the destruction of an American city. After announcing his intent to update the monster movie genre, he created the spectacle Cloverfield. Then he struck out to boldly restart the Star Trek franchise. Now he has his sights on an earthquake movie with The Omen scribe David Seltzer.

Like most Abrams projects, it will start untitled and the plot will be kept a secret for much of the production. But as the Hollywood Reporter points out, his usual take is to focus on personal relationships in a time of crisis.

Abrams is directing the Star Trek prequel/reboot, but is only producing the earthquake movie at this point. No other director has been selected.

Seltzer has a remake of Hitchcock classic Strangers on a Train in the works.

Ordinarily I’d be bored to hear about another disaster movie, especially after the constant movies about volcanoes, meteors, and sudden ice age disasters that have all been mostly terrible. But he managed to make Cloverfield a really unique experience and I believe he’ll find a way to do the same here.

I can’t wait for the painfully slow viral campaign for this one.  The LA earthquake about two weeks ago was probably the beginning of the marketing.