At first, Abrams’ ‘Mission’ did seem impossible

Tom Cruise was so determined to get J.J. Abrams to direct the third installment of his “Mission: Impossible” franchise that he persuaded Paramount Pictures to put the project on hold for a year. He also helped persuade Steven Spielberg to move up production on “War of the Worlds” and postpone work on “Munich” to accommodate Abrams’ schedule.

Once he finally stepped behind the cameras, Abrams found himself wondering how he, a neophyte filmmaker who had come to fame on the small screen creating the influential television hits “Lost” and “Alias,” had ended up on the set of a $165-million Tom Cruise movie.

“There were moments of lucidity where I would realize, ‘What in the name of God am I doing?’ ” Abrams said. “And then I would just get distracted by the issue at hand, run off and blow something up.”

The opening entry in this year’s expanded summer movie season, Friday’s “Mission: Impossible III” will naturally be seen as an audience referendum on Cruise, who is coming off both his biggest career hit (“War of the Worlds”) and an equally outsized barrage of problematic publicity.

But Paramount Pictures is also looking to the Abrams-Cruise partnership to break its nearly yearlong box-office slump (for every hit such as “Four Brothers,” Paramount also has had clunkers like “Elizabethtown”) and perhaps help reverse a broader box-office malaise.

Although few doubt that the movie will be a success with young men who flock to action titles, some Paramount executives are privately worried that Cruise’s unpredictable off-screen exploits might have hurt the actor’s appeal with women. A few people associated with the film even hoped Cruise would play the part of the dedicated dad and stay home with his newborn daughter rather than travel overseas for the film’s several premieres. (Cruise ultimately attended premieres in Rome, London and Paris, traveling with his two older children.)

A competing studio contends audience interest in the sequel is running about a third lower than it did at the same point before the premiere of 2000’s second “Mission: Impossible” installment, although Paramount said comparisons with a 6-year-old movie are worthless. But one internal Paramount tracking report reveals that Sony’s “Da Vinci Code” is generating much stronger audience interest even though it opens two weeks after “Mission: Impossible III.” And among women 30 and older, “Da Vinci Code” is sparking twice the enthusiasm of “Mission: Impossible III.”

A recent change in Paramount’s marketing campaign, which pushes the film’s plotting and character over its action to appeal to women, had been planned all along, the studio said, after its initial campaign targeting a core audience of younger males had played out. The studio said Friday that the campaign’s pursuit of women was working; interest among female moviegoers was up.

Abrams, who has attracted millions of female viewers to his popular TV series including “Felicity,” says he’s aware of the marketing challenges, but Paramount “has it covered.”

Regardless of the sequel’s ultimate performance, one thing already is certain: Abrams, unlike some who preceded him on the “Mission: Impossible” films, was able to find common creative ground with Cruise. That was crucial, because Abrams wasn’t just directing Cruise, he was working for him -- the actor, along with partner Paula Wagner, produces the “Mission: Impossible” movies.

“So many people I know warned me not to do this movie, just for that reason,” Abrams said. “Not because of Tom in particular. Just the notion of a star producer -- they thought I was an idiot. But I felt like I could trust him. He said, ‘I want this to be your “Mission: Impossible.” I’m the actor. You’re the director.’ ”

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Hitting it off

Abrams said he had little idea what his longtime agent was referring to when he called in the middle of dinner two years ago.

“Are you aware of the conversations?” agent David Lonner asked cryptically.

“The conversations” were that with just weeks before production was to commence on “Mission: Impossible III,” director Joe Carnahan (“Narc”) was off the film and Cruise wanted Abrams as his replacement. The switch would cost Paramount some $30 million in sunk costs.

Abrams, 39, grew up loving the original TV show, which ran from 1966 to 1973, and had a boyhood crush on one of its stars, Lynda Day George. But he had yet to put a foot of film through a feature film camera, and “Lost” had yet to become a premiere, let alone a sensation. Still, he was more than a little intrigued.

Cruise and Spielberg previously had wanted Abrams, whose screenplay credits include “Regarding Henry,” “Forever Young” and “Armageddon,” to rewrite “War of the Worlds.” But Abrams wasn’t available to work on that movie as he was in the middle of the “Lost” pilot.

All the same, Cruise and Abrams hit it off.

Then Cruise watched the first two seasons of “Alias,” which, Abrams explains, was partially inspired by the “Mission: Impossible” TV show. The actor apparently liked what he saw.

“He invited me and my wife to a concert one night, and I invited him to my birthday party,” Abrams said. “He came, hung out and was one of the last to leave. It was like -- ‘How the hell is Tom Cruise at our house?’ ”

Around that time, Abrams was angling to direct “Superman Returns,” having written a script about the superhero for Warner Bros. Warners chose “X-Men’s” Bryan Singer instead (who then rewrote the Abrams script), but three weeks later, Carnahan was out, and Abrams potentially in.

“I met with Tom and Paula, and Tom gave me that ‘Risky Business’ smile and said, ‘Do you want to do it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I want to do it. But what is it? What’s the story? I haven’t read the script,’ ” Abrams said.

The once-robust “Mission: Impossible” franchise had been dormant since 2000, and the screenplay for the third film had undergone countless revisions under Frank Darabont (“The Shawshank Redemption”), Dean Georgaris (“Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life”), Dan Gilroy (“Two for the Money”) and Robert Towne (“Chinatown”).

Abrams gave the script a look: “I felt my heart sink.” Abrams believed the first two “Mission: Impossible” movies had not captured the quintessential spirit of the TV series, and he found the screenplay for the third film too dark, too political, too impersonal.

“I’m just not the guy to make that movie,” Abrams said he told Cruise after reading the script. “And he said, ‘What would you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know exactly, but I know I want to do a much more personal story, something more character-based than mission-based.’ I thought he would say, ‘Well, we have to shoot in two months. Next time, we’ll do something.’ But he said, ‘Let’s do that version.’ ”

Cruise’s 180-degree turn on a script he had personally developed was certainly peculiar, but the logistics of his about-face were even stranger. Cruise had to put “Mission” on hold for a year and help coax Spielberg into changing production schedules for both the director’s “War of the Worlds” and “Munich.”

“All of a sudden, you have Tom Cruise saying, ‘And I want this TV boy to direct the movie,’ ” Abrams said. “There is no good in that scenario. And [former Paramount head] Sherry Lansing did it. I was hired by Tom and given a stamp of approval by Sherry. But I don’t think the stamp landed with a loud thud. I think it was a reluctant press of a stamp. By the way, I could not blame her less. I don’t know what I would have done in her situation, besides panic.”

Where the first two “Mission: Impossible” movies (directed by Brian De Palma and John Woo, respectively) were full of gadgets and complex, sometimes hard-to-follow narratives, Abrams and “Alias” writing collaborators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci wanted the third movie to be more about Hunt.

“Our question was, ‘What would the “Jerry Maguire” version of Ethan Hunt look like?’ ” Kurtzman said. Added Orci: “Who is he today? Who is he as a married man?”

In the new film, Hunt is engaged to be wed and trying to cut back on secret agent gigs. He reluctantly returns to help rescue a former spy student (Keri Russell, who starred in “Felicity”). Hunt then spearheads a job inside the Vatican to kidnap Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a villain involved with a mysterious weapon called the rabbit’s foot. What really gets Hunt going, though, is when his fiancee (Michelle Monaghan) is taken hostage.

The exact risk of Davian’s doomsday device isn’t all that clear, and intentionally so. Hunt isn’t out to save the world from some unspeakable weapon. He’s out to save his girl.

The issue now is whether moviegoers will once again embrace Cruise -- and give Abrams the same huge following he has enjoyed in television. Although Cruise’s “Oprah” antics didn’t seem to hurt “War of the Worlds,” the actor, 43, has come under recent scrutiny for, among other things, blasting Brooke Shields’ use of medication for postpartum depression and fathering an out-of-wedlock baby with actress Katie Holmes, 27.

Rather than looking shellshocked by so many distractions, Abrams is eager for more of the same and just agreed to try to breathe new life into Paramount’s stalled “Star Trek” movie series.

“You obviously worry when you’re doing a show or a movie and you realize that if that person does anything in an extracurricular way, is that going to affect what you do?” Abrams said. “But you have to live in a practical way in that you try to control to the best of your ability what you can control.”