Paramount Pictures announced today that J.J. Abrams (a guy mostly famous for writing Alias episodes) will be in the director’s chair for the much delayed MI:3. The movie is slated to star a better cast than it deserves with names like Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Carrie-Anne Moss, Kenneth Branagh, and Scarlett Johansson… but J.J. Abrams may have awhile to wait before he starts filming.

The film is set to start shooting in summer of 2005, but as Stuart reported here on CB last week, Cruise’s involvement on MI:3 only starts when he’s done working with Steven Spielberg on War of the Worlds. War of the Worlds is slated for a summer 2005 release, so shooting in Summer 2005 sounds pretty reasonable. Besides, I’m not sure Cruise can push it back much further without outright quitting.

Abrams has just about zero directing experience so it’ll be interesting to see what he comes up with… and even more interesting to hear why so many big names would want to stay on board his project.

Confuse Abrams with Jameson in The CB Forum.
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