When it comes to creating or co-creating series, J.J. Abrams has a solid track record so far with “Felicity,” “Alias,” “Lost” and “Fringe” all big critical, commercial or cult hits.
He’ll soon return to the small screen realm as creator of HBO’s new sci-fi series “Demimonde” – a project first announced back in 2018 but one that stalled due to his “Rise of Skywalker” commitments and shortly after that due to the pandemic.
Recently Abrams spoke with Collider and revealed that he and the team behind the series have been able to get a lot of work done on the show which is still very much happening.
In fact, the delays caused by COVID-19 have allowed them to write the entire first season and plot out the show’s full series arc:
“We’ve had a terrific writer’s room for about a year, and… one of the remarkable and unexpected benefits of this otherwise trying and in many cases painful time has been that the projects that we’ve been working on have been allowed to gestate and simmer.
The writing has been able to happen without that more typical urgency of pre-production and production, where suddenly you’re looking at locations, and auditions, and set design, and production design, and props, and things, when you’re just trying to figure out the bones and the framework.
The beauty of this time on Demimonde, for example, is we’ve been able to not just outline the season, but write the season. Not just roughly understand where we want to go over the course of the series, but actually plot it out.
So, I feel like we’re in a place that feels like it should be more the norm than it ever is to really kind of know where you’re going to go. But to your earlier question that was a really good one about planning things out, I just feel like that’s one of the things that this time has allowed us to do in a way that I don’t think we’ve ever had the luxury before.”
The series has been dubbed an epic and intimate sci-fi fantasy drama about a world’s battle against a monstrous, oppressive force. Kira Snyder, Rand Ravich, and Far Shariat are serving as executive producers and showrunners for Bad Robot Productions and Warner Bros. Television.
At present, it’s not known if Abrams will be directing any of the series.