No matter where the traditional borders of Hollywood sit, filmmaking today is a global conceit, and America’s films—whether adored or condemned, imitated or illegally reproduced—have become even more of a cultural flashpoint for the rest of the world. As a result, Hollywood productions are tending toward one of two distinct directions—either huge, special-effects-laden blockbusters with international appeal, or smaller films designed to have maximum domestic appeal.

Portfolio.com talked to those film executives who are helping shape both ends of this spectrum, from the visionary producer of Juno, who’s breaking all the indie rules, to the audacious new head of Marvel Studios, who’s determined to own the summer season.

J.J. Abrams: The Creator
Title: Chairman, Bad Robot
Notable projects: TV series Alias, Felicity, and Lost, co-creator and producer; films Mission: Impossible III, director, and Cloverfield, producer
Years in business: 18

J.J. Abrams has long been known as Hollywood’s boy wonder, the storytelling wizard behind the hit television series Alias, Felicity, and Lost. But the surprise success of his production company’s first major film, Cloverfield, has marked the wunderkind’s arrival as a significant Hollywood heavyweight, with talk of “the next Steven Spielberg” and “the next Dreamworks” being bandied about.

“We have big dreams, and we have some pretty cool things in the works,” Abrams says. “People say I’m going to start my own Imagine or Dreamworks, but it’s always strange to me talking about a company in that way, modeling it after other companies.” His current project is a new Star Trek movie, which Bad Robot is producing for Paramount and for which Abrams is director and producer.

Abrams proved his big-screen mettle directing Tom Cruise in the 2006 film Mission: Impossible III, which grossed $395 million worldwide; and while the success of that film might have signaled his obvious transition to directing, Abrams launched Bad Robot last year with the bigger aim of shepherding his own projects.

“The idea is to take the various lessons I’ve been lucky enough to learn in television and apply them to feature-film making and do movies that have all the ambition, but not necessarily the excess, that some movies have,” the 41-year-old explains.

Cloverfield was produced by Abrams’ Bad Robot for $25 million, and it set box office records in January with a $41 million opening weekend and a $12,000 per-screen average, amassing $146 million after fewer than five weeks in wide release. But despite its mainstream success, the unusual monster-disaster movie was an experimental effort in almost every way. Abrams hired a relative unknown, Matt Reeves, to direct the film, which was shot handheld from a “scriptment,” an outline around which dialogue was improvised. The project was also made on a risky, midsize budget. Studios prefer to green-light massive movies or very small films; anything in between is seen as lost money.

But Abrams says Cloverfield is exactly the type of mid-budget, surprise blockbuster that his production company hopes to do more of in the future, as well as producing the occasional big-budget tent-pole movie.

Abrams’ current project, the latest installment in the Star Trek franchise, is due in May 2009 and, with a $150 million budget, is the biggest film he’s taken on yet. But the size of the film hasn’t changed the way he works.

“When a movie is a $130 to $150 or $160 million movie, it sounds like the champagne is flowing, but the truth is you still need to treat that every day as if you were making a movie that cost 10 times less than that,” Abrams says.

Given his larger goals for Bad Robot and his gee-whiz sense of storytelling, the Steven Spielberg comparison is a natural. But it’s a description Abrams calls preposterous.

Says Abrams, “I guess anyone who hears that has just been talking to my mom.”