Everything We Know About J. J. Abrams’s Secretive Sci-fi Film, The Great Beyond

3 min readJ. J. Abrams is finished with sequels and reboots. “I'm more excited about working on things that are original ideas that perhaps one day someone else will have to reboot,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. Enough time working on Star Trek and Star Wars films (and dealing with the ire from their ceaseless fan bases) would understandably convince anyone to leave the franchise business, and Hollywood sounds better off for it.Now, the director is working on his first original concept film since 2011’s Super 8, a secret science fantasy film titled The Great Beyond. It’s out in theaters on October 1, 2027, and stars Glen Powell, Jenna Ortega, and Samuel L. Jackson. The story reportedly follows “a fantasy author [who] discovers that the world he's known for creating is real,” per IMDb. And as Powell told Esquire in our latest cover story, Abrams is absolutely ecstatic about the project.The director first called Powell about The Great Beyond while the actor was storm chasing for Twisters, Powell says, pitching him the project over the phone as the group approached a forming tornado.“We were in the car, heading to chase a tornado, and I got a text from J.J.,” Powell tells Esquire. “He said, ‘There’s a project that I have that I want to talk to you about. Are you around right now?’““I just remember Daisy Edgar-Jones and our storm-chaser friends are outside the car and the wind is whipping like crazy and I’m taking a call from J. J. Abrams,” he continued. “I was really trying to be as quick as possible so that they didn’t get swept up into everything.”The director went on to update Powell throughout the entire process of writing the film—no matter where he was or what time it was. He even FaceTimed Powell from shopping aisles, working through important snags in the plot whenever inspiration struck.““I was like, ‘J. J., you’re in a Target. You want to just call me in five minutes?’” Powell tells Esquire.Outside of that, we know little else about the plot for The Great Beyond. Filming took place across Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as in Providence, Rhode Island. Could that mean Powell’s character might have drawn some inspiration from Stephen King? Possibly! The story about a fantasy writer who learns that his world is real sounds like a mix of In the Mouth of Madness and Stranger Than Fiction. The Great Beyond was originally scheduled to debut in theaters later this year on November 13, 2026, but the release date was pushed back to late 2027. Deadline reported that early test screenings at Warner Bros. ended with execs asking for 70mm IMAX prints—a large-screen format that recently had a massive resurgence thanks to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.Though Powell likely wishes the film was just a month away instead of a year out, he tells Esquire that making the film was one of the best experiences of his career so far.“He’s one of the very few directors I’ve ever worked with where we would go out for dinner after work and have a drink and a meal and talk about the day,” says Powell. “We were just best buds. It was the exact thing I needed at that moment in my life.”