Fast Company – May 2019

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MAY 2019 FASTCOMPANY.COM 49

launch Jennifer Garner’s ca-
reer, then ABC Entertainment
president Steve McPherson
asked him why he didn’t have
a pod deal. Abrams’s response:
“What’s that?”
Bad Robot, the “pod” (or pro-
duction company) he formed
shortly after, has gotten ap-
proximately 30 film and TV projects made in
18 years. “[J.J. went from] arguably one of the
three to five top creators of TV series,” says
Peter Roth, who runs Warner Bros. Television,
“into a world-class entertainment mogul.”
At the same time, like Spielberg, who
cofounded the multimedia company Dream-
Works in the mid-1990s, Abrams has dabbled
in media that reflects his varied interests.
Apple recognized Bad Robot’s Action Movie
FX app, which lets users add special effects
to their own videos, as one of the apps of the
year in 2012; he collaborated with writer Doug
Dorst on an experimental novel, S, which be-
came a New York Times best seller in 2013; and
he helped bring the British stage comedy The
Play That Goes Wrong to Broadway in 2017.
It won a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design.
Around that time, Abrams and McGrath
were ready to get more serious about their
experiments. They brought on COO Wein-
stein, who’d run global client strategy at the
CAA talent agency, which represents Abrams,

Beastlies Emote?” (Another area of inquiry:
Can Beastlies fart?)
In Bad Robot’s new era of figuring out
ways to control—and monetize—its creations,
Beastlies is Project X. “It’s probably going to
be the first thing we take out into the mar-
ketplace in a significant way that is wholly
owned” by Bad Robot, says McGrath. “That
feels exciting. [Beastlies are] the kind of bets
that we want to make.”
Most notably, as Abrams points out, “this
toy deal was not inspired by a release date of
a movie in a tentpole-driven system where
everyone knows exactly what’s going to hap-
pen. It’s a toy. Let’s figure out how to make
those the greatest toys.”

WE ’ RE U P STAI R S I N AB R AMS ’ S O FF I C E AN D
the lighting isn’t quite right.
“I’m just going to turn these blinds down a
bit because it’s so bright,” he says, as he moves
toward the long rectangular window behind
us. “I want to make sure I can look at you.”
Abrams’s two-room inner sanctum func-
tions as a curiosity shop of its own. A rack of
packaged magic tricks stands in one corner,
looking like it was lifted directly from a toy
store. Dozens of packs of magicians’ playing
cards are lined up in rows in a glass shadow-
box coffee table. Next to where he sits is a
bust of actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., head
thrown back in mid-shriek. A book-lined wall
near Abrams’s desk doubles as yet another
trick: When you pull out a copy of Louis Tan-
nen’s Catalog of Magic, the wall swings open
and reveals a private bathroom.
Abrams never set out to start a company,
he explains in his fast-paced staccato. All he
ever wanted to do was support filmmakers,
something he learned from his dad, Gerald
Abrams, a prominent TV producer in the
1970s who became chairman of Hearst Enter-
tainment. “I’d hear him on the phone all the
time,” recalls Abrams, whose room was next
to his dad’s home office. “He was dealing with
writers and producers and running projects
while I was editing my Super 8 movies or
drawing. I spent a lot of time in my room.”
Abrams met his future Felicity produc-
ing partner Matt Reeves when, at 15 years
old, they entered the Best Teen Super 8mm
Films of ’81 festival in Los Angeles. A news
article about the event caught Kathleen Ken-
nedy’s eye, and she persuaded Steven Spiel-
berg—whose production company, Amblin
Entertainment, she co-ran—to hire the duo
to preserve Spielberg’s own childhood Super
8 films, kick-starting Abrams and Spielberg’s
nearly four-decades-long relationship.
While Abrams was developing Alias
in the early 2000s, the series that would

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to add “more business acumen
and muscle,” McGrath says.
Weinstein’s mandate has been
to formalize operations in cer-
tain areas of the company, such
as games and music, while still
respecting his partners’ desire
for “folly.” As Abrams admits,
“I don’t feel like we’ve ever ap-
proached our business strategically. We’ve
approached it instinctively.”
Weinstein is also pursuing that “mega-
deal” for Bad Robot. He jokes that he’s the
only one at the company who wears a sport
coat, but he’s learning how to relate to the
staff, particularly the guy who’s often shoot-
ing a blockbuster on another continent.
“There’s lots of tricky stuff we have to deal
with,” Weinstein says, “and the best way to
get J.J. to [address] the tricky stuff is to send
him an email about the font guy that he’s
thinking about [hiring].” Or “send him an
email and be like, ‘Somebody’s interested in
this model kit.’ Or, ‘What do you think about
this graphic novel?’ You get an immediate
response, [even] in the middle of Star Wars.
As opposed to, ‘Hey, listen, there’s this really
important business decision we have to deal
with, what do you think?’ It’s crickets.”

BAD ROBOT’S GROWTH STRATEGY IS SIMPLE:
Focus on the things (Continued on page 94)

BEAST MODE
“They have this
mischievous, disrup-
tive, but earnest and
open-hearted person-
ality,” says Levings
of Beastlies.
Free download pdf