Producer, writer and director J.J Abrams has come a long, long way from his fledgling career in the early 80s. Initially writing music for cult director Don Dohler's Nightbeast in 1982, the young Abrams steadily built a lucrative Hollywood career, finding early success with his screenplay for 1992's Forever Young, which he sold for a reported $2million.

Having captured the geek culture zeitgeist with his hit TV shows Alias and Lost, and achieving big screen success with 2009's Star Trek, the multi-talented Abrams is now looking to pitch a new series called Alcatraz. As the name suggests, it's a drama set inside the infamous San Francisco prison island, already the subject of such memorable films as Don Siegel's Escape From Alcatraz and Michael Bay's loveably daft The Rock.

Abrams' Alcatraz will be produced through his usual conduit, Bad Robot, and will see him once again team up with Elizabeth Sarnoff, whom he last worked with on Lost.

While there are no further details on the show's subject matter, we're presuming it'll be a fact-based period piece, set somewhere between 1934, the year it opened, and the year it closed, 1963. Or maybe it'll be like Abrams' other drama set on an island, and filled with rampaging polar bears and smoke monsters. Only time will tell.

Entertainment Weekly