National Typewriter

Unofficial Bad Robot blog

December 25, 2023

March 19, 2023

David Robert Mitchell, Anne Hathaway, Bad Robot Team For Mystery Warner Bros. Pic 

Anne Hathaway has signed on to star in a mysterious new film that David Robert Mitchell will direct for Warner Bros. Pictures, Bad Robot and Jackson Pictures.

While the pic is billed as a “thrill-ride” to be shot in IMAX, which will head into production this fall, other details are scarce at present.

Mitchell penned the original script and will produce alongside J.J. Abrams and Hannah Minghella for Bad Robot, and Jackson Pictures’ Matt Jackson. Jake Weiner and Chris Bender of Good Fear Content will serve as exec producers.

#film #warner-bros

Bad Robot Lands Film Rights To Mona Awad’s Bestselling Novel ‘Bunny’ 

The story follows Samantha Heather Mackey, who couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort — a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other “Bunny” and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when she receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled “Smut Salon,” and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door — ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus “Workshop” where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

#bunny #film

J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Forms Theater Division 

To bring Abrams’ vision to the theater, Bad Robot Live has signed an exclusive three-year partnership with Ambassador Theatre Group. The joint development arrangement provides ATG with collaboration opportunities on Bad Robot Live’s current and future theater projects, and it gives Bad Robot Live the opportunity to work on ATG productions.

#bad-robot-live #theatre

March 10, 2023

‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ Moves to Amazon With Two-Season Order 

This is great news. Warner Bros. dumping it from HBOmax was stupid.

The streamer and retail giant has handed out a two-season order for the animated series, which was originally set up at HBO Max. Caped Crusader landed at the Jennifer Salke-led streamer following Warner Bros. Animation parent company Warner Bros. Discovery scrapping the show in August — more than a year after it was ordered straight to series — amid a round of cost-cutting.

#amazon #batman-caped-crusader #television

February 25, 2023

5th Annual Kodak Film Awards to Give J.J. Abrams Lifetime Achievement Award 

Emmy Award® winning director/writer/producer/composer J.J. Abrams will receive the Kodak Lifetime Achievement Award for his incomparable contributions to film and television.

All of the feature films Abrams has directed have been shot on KODAK film, including his 2011 coming of age thriller Super 8 and most recent directorial accomplishment Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker.

#award #film

February 19, 2023

A return to an old idea

I started a similar blog about 10 years ago — I think I actually did it more than once — but I never really kept up with it and it just sort of drifted off into the abyss.

Maybe that’s what will happen again this time, maybe it won’t. There certainly isn’t as much Bad Robot content on-air right now in comparison to previous times I’ve tried this, so that’s a challenge.

All that aside I’m going to give it a crack, partly because I needed something to tinker on, partly because I want to blog/write more (even though this will probably be mostly link sharing), partly because I love Bad Robot’s work, and partly because I love the “Bad Robot wearing JJ’s glasses” logo I designed.

If you too are a fan of Bad Robot’s work, then you probably already ‘get’ the “National Typewriter” reference, but for the uninitiated, and in classic mystery box style, “The National Typewriter Company” is the signage on Bad Robot’s HQ in Santa Monica.

#film #television

February 5, 2023

J.J. Abrams, Warner Bros. Team for Adaptation of Stephen King Crime Novel ‘Billy Summers’ 

Appian Way will also produce the project, which is being written by Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz.

A year ago, Bad Robot was developing the IP as a limited series with Zwick and Herskovitz attached to adapt, and Zwick looking to direct a good portion of the episodes, if not all.

Not one of King’s horror novels, Summers focuses on a 44-year-old hitman, the eponymous Billy Summers, who is considering retirement when he accepts one last job from a regular client. (“One last job” is always synonymous with “Things go awry,” but we’ll get to that in a moment.) Taking up a cover story that he is a novelist, Summers ensconces himself in a small town as he preps for the hit, and in his spare time actually begins to write a novel, which turns into his life story, from his little sister being killed by their mother’s boyfriend to him becoming a decorated sniper.

The hit … goes awry when the regular client doesn’t pay and Summers escapes a trap. His life gets even more complicated when he finds out there’s a bounty on his head, and he saves a rape victim named Alice. Summers and Alice then end up on a cross-country journey to rectify the hitman’s many wrongs.

#billy-summers #film #stephen-king

February 1, 2023

Jason Bateman On The Case To Direct ‘The Pinkerton’ 

Jason Bateman is set to direct The Pinkerton, a supernatural revenge-western hybrid that Warner Bros. and JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot acquired two years ago. Pic was sold as a spec by F9’s Daniel Casey.

It was the first original film project for Bad Robot since Warner Bros signed a big deal with the producer. Bateman and Michael Costigan will be exec producers. Bad Robot’s Abrams and Hannah Minghella are the producers.

The Pinkertons were a private security guard and detective agency established in the U.S. by Scotsman Allan Pinkerton in 1850. Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln, who later hired Pinkerton agents for his personal security during the Civil War.

#film #the-pinkerton #warner-bros