After the success of Westworld, J.J. Abrams is readying another HBO TV show set in space called Glare.
It appears that the working relationship between visionary J.J. Abrams and premium cable giant HBO is going swimmingly. Just days after the Abrams-executive-produced Westworld Season 1 finale left audiences vexed and flummoxed in a good way, it is being reported that he’ll be working with the network for another presumably prestigious television project, this time set in space. With that setting, he’s giving the show a title that might be letting us all know that he’s in on the obvious ensuing joke.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot production company and Warner Bros. Television will develop a new serial television project for HBO called Glare. While early details about the show are still scarce, it will manifest as a 1-hour drama about a group who colonize a planet. Spanish screenwriter Javier Gullón will serve as the project’s creative fulcrum. Gullón, the writer of the 2013 Jake Gyllenhaal-starring thriller Enemy, will also serve alongside Abrams as an executive producer for Glare after having nabbed a blind script deal with Bad Robot.
Besides his geek deity status as a creative mastermind behind the current big-screen revivals of the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, Abrams still boosts his television resume, which goes back to the 1990’s as producer of shows like Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe, Revolution, Roadies and, his latest hit with HBO’s Westworld. However, those familiar with Internet snark might have caught on to the fact that the title Glare is a workable synonym for “lens flare.” Of course, a common critical trope of Abrams’s filmmaking style, specifically in his space-set movies, centers on his overuse of lens flare in shots. Thus, as this latest small screen venture presumably looks to awe audiences with (digitally-concocted) sublime space cinematography, that title just might be a way to neutralize the common critique.
HBO has certainly become an embarrassment of prestige television riches. With the monolithic global hit Game of Thrones remaining its centerpiece and Westworld possibly vying for that spot, it will be interesting to see how J.J. Abrams and Javier Gullón put the proper HBO spin on outer space tropes, especially with loads of space-set shows planned on competing networks.