J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Is Scaling Down After That $250M Warner Bros. Deal Failed to Produce Anything

It looks like Bad Robot is entering a very different chapter.

J.J. Abrams’ once high-flying production banner is scaling things down, shutting its Los Angeles office, and shifting operations to New York, where Abrams is now based. Not long ago, this company felt like its own mini-studio. That version of Bad Robot doesn’t really exist anymore.

The transition follows the sale of their longtime Santa Monica headquarters, which went for $31M back in November. The downsizing didn’t happen overnight either — they’d already been trimming staff over the last few years. At its peak, that building was packed with hundreds of employees, including their in-house VFX arm, Kelvin Optical.

It’s hard not to look at this through the lens of that massive Warner Bros. deal. The studio famously handed Abrams a $250M overall agreement, and yet the output since then has been… sparse. There’s a sense that a lot of money went out the door.

Abrams does still have projects in the pipeline. There’s “The Great Beyond,” starring Glen Powell, slated for a November release. However, early test screening chatter hasn’t been particularly encouraging. They’re also producing “The End of Oak Street,” starring Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway — another Warner-backed production. On the TV side, Abrams recently produced “Duster” for HBO Max with Josh Holloway, which ended up getting canceled.

Ironically, Bad Robot’s biggest recent success didn’t even come from Warner. It was “Presumed Innocent” for Apple, which quietly became a hit and helped put Chase Infiniti on the map. It’s telling that the company’s most notable win in years came outside the studio that invested so heavily in them.

Of course, this is still the same company that once dominated both TV and film. Founded in 1999, Bad Robot was behind landmark television like “Alias” and “Lost,” and later had a hand in “Westworld.” On the film side, early successes included John Dahl’s underrated “Joy Ride” (2001), followed by “Cloverfield” (2008) and Abrams’ own “Star Trek” reboot (2009). After Abrams directed “Mission: Impossible III” in 2006, Bad Robot went on to co-produce the next three installments in that franchise. They also produced “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” both directed by Abrams.

Still, the current downsizing suggests a company in transition. The industry has changed, the output has slowed, and Bad Robot now seems to be a shell of itself.