J.J. Abrams Star Wars Production Offices - H 2013
When Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy announced in May that production for Star Wars: Episode VII would take place in the U.K., there was one decidedly less-than-happy camper: director J.J. Abrams.
He voiced his disappointment at the Produced By conference a few weeks later, noting that the move to London, expected at year’s end, would be an inconvenience to his wife and kids. “When you’re 13 and 14, it’s like, f— that, I don’t care what the movie is,” he joked in June.
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Now it appears that the director is building a work-around designed to keep at least a portion of the movie’s production closer to home. According to one insider, Abrams — who has shot all of his films in Los Angeles (he even personally covered some of Star Trek Into Darkness‘ costs in order to keep production local) — is converting a portion of his Bad Robot headquarters into production spaces built specifically for the Star Wars project.
A green room, sound studios and other new facilities will be developed within the three-story, 18,000-square-foot Santa Monica building, which already includes editing bays, a workshop for making props, a screening room that can double as a set and Abrams’ personal suite of offices. Star Wars: Episode VII is set to be released in 2015 by Disney. Bad Robot and Disney declined comment.
