J.J. Abrams

Jeffrey Jacob Abrams is an American film producer, director and screenwriter. His first genre work was the 1982 low-budget film Nightbeast working in the sound department and serving as the film's score composer. In 1998, he wrote the screenplay for the Michael Bay-helmed action film Armageddon. That same year, Abrams created the first of several successful television programs, Felicity. Hot on the heels of his work on the angsty teen drama, he turned his sights towards the espionage field in another equally successful show, Alias. As popular as these two programs were however, they were nothing compared to the 2004-2010 show that made J.J. Abrams a household name - ABC's Lost. From 2006 to 2007, Abrams served as executive producer on the short-lived dramatic series Six Degrees. 2008 saw Abrams' first major film work when he produced Cloverfield, a "giant monster" movie that went above and beyond the norm due to it's "real-world" filming and intense viral marketing campaign. Cloverfield quickly gathered a cult following, but received lukewarm box office appeal, grossing $80,034,302 in the United States. Hot off the heels of Cloverfield, Abrams began working on this next TV venture, the sci-fi/mystery series Fringe. The reputation Abrams had garnered from Alias and Lost helped to propel Fringe 's viewship appeal as well. In 2009, Abrams took on an ambitious and somewhat controversial project - retooling the Star Trek franchise for a new generation of movie watchers. Despite concern from longtime Star Trek friends who were reluctant to see such a treasured franchise re-imagined, Star Trek opened to relatively positive reviews, grossing $75,204,289 on 3,849 screens over its opening weekend. J.J. Abrams next sci-fi venture was the 2011 film Super 8.