Abrams’s love of music (he wrote the theme
songs for Alias and Lost, among others), but
eight months ago he launched his own record
label, Loud Robot, to help artists create multi-
media projects. What if Bad Robot finds a new
toy and it—not a studio or a network—goes
directly to a toy maker to discuss a franchise,
rather than waiting for the toy to become
popular and then making something out of
it? Bad Robot is doing that, too. “There are a
million production companies, and anyone
can buy the book or the pitch,” Abrams says.
“My favorite thing is finding storytellers who
have an idea—a song or a book or a game—and
finding ways to realize those things.”
To help fund this ambition, Bad Robot
plans to replace its traditional movie and
television distribution partners with what
Variety dubbed a “Record-Shattering Overall
Megadeal” that could support everything
from movies to digital content to theme-
park attractions. (Its TV pact
with Warner Bros. expires in
May and the film one with Para-
mount in March 2020.)
If Ryan Murphy (American
Horror Story) can command $300
million from Netflix and Greg
Berlanti (The Flash) is worth
$400 million to Warner, what is
Abrams’s value to a media or tech company?
Will he be the first creative unicorn? And what
can that money buy Bad Robot? “I do feel like
we’ve been a bit at the kids’ table on the busi-
ness side of things,” Abrams says, leaning
forward in his chair. “I want Bad Robot to be
at the grown-ups’ table.”“ TH E DRE AM WA S TO B LOW PEO PLE ’ S M I N DS
about how much we could do under one
roof,” McGrath says one afternoon on a tour
of the Bad Robot workshop, an open space
on the first floor of the company, where a
full-time staff crafts items like cribbage
boards and wooden slide puzzles. “We have
all of these weird machines—you have no
idea,” she says. Walking by a whirring one
that is slowly extruding a sticker the size of
a workbench, she says dryly, “You can wrap
a car in that.”
Looking more like a grad student than a
Hollywood executive in her
long dark sweater and black
platform loafers, McGrath is a
vibrant presence at the com-
pany, and has been Abrams’s
business partner overseeing
management and operations
as well as leading its diversity
and inclusion efforts—wellThis^ pageand^ following^ spread:^ Hair^andmakeup:^ Jill^ CrosbyusingIntelligent^ Nutrients^ andIlia(McGrath,^ Levings)before #MeToo. (She’s also his spouse of 22
years.) McGrath describes what goes on at
the workshop as “folly”—i.e., there is no plan
to monetize any of the tchotchkes and trin-
kets (yet), some of which wind up as gifts for
Abrams’s movie crews. One time, after Elon
Musk gave Abrams and others a tour of Tesla,
SpaceX, and the Boring Company, Abrams used
the workshop to make Musk a hat that bore
a Boring Company logo of Abrams’s design.
Musk adopted the logo—and went on to sell
50,000 hats.
“Creativity happens in every corner of the
building,” McGrath says, and as if to prove her
point, she takes us to a crook of the workshop,
where a collection of brightly colored figurines
with googly eyes is being forged in a toaster
oven. If anything exemplifies Bad Robot’s fu-
ture ambitions, it’s efforts like these.
Abrams first spotted the palm-size pop-
eyed monsters, made from Sculpey clay, a
decade ago when he and his eldest son were
shopping at Meltdown Comics, a shrine to
nerddom on Sunset Boulevard. (It closed last
year.) He was immediately captivated. “You
look in their eyes, there’s something desper-
ate,” he says excitedly. “There’s something
sneaky. There is something terrified. There’s
something uncertain. Each one felt like an
insecurity or a problem. Every good characterFOUND
Abrams and McGrath
met at a dinner
party in the
early 1990s and
have been a couple
ever since.