Super 8

[MacGuffin]

Secret J.J. Abrams Trailer Debuting with 'Iron Man 2'
by Christopher Campbell; Cinematical

The teaser trailer for the film Super 8 will be attached to prints of Iron Man 2 this weekend. Excited? You've been waiting for this moment for over a year, after hearing about the film's announcement via the trades, through casting update after casting update reported on all the movie blogs, then after getting glimpses of ... wait, no, you've experienced none of that. Somehow Super 8 is a complete mystery to even those geeks who scour each and every site for info on every film at any stage of development and production. How is this possible? It's a J.J. Abrams production, that's how. Just as you'd never heard of Cloverfield before seeing its teaser ahead of Transformers, this latest Bad Robot film has been a secret up until now.

Well, maybe it's not entirely the first time you've heard of this. According to HitFix, Super 8 is rumored to actually be the Cloverfield sequel we've been waiting on for two years. Abrams revealed back in January that Cloverfield 2 was finally in some early stages of development, and its IMDb page currently lists it as a 2011 release. If you recall, one idea for a sequel was to have it set during the same night as the first film but from the perspective of another, unrelated character. So if Super 8 is indeed the real title, perhaps it refers to another document of the Cloverfield Monster attack, this one shot on a Super 8 camera. Does that mean the protagonist will be some artsy experimental filmmaker sill working with 8mm stock?

Or, maybe Abrams, his co-writer, Drew Goddard, and returning director Matt Reeves changed their mind and have made a Cloverfield prequel, set in the '70s and documented with that era's home movie standard, as kind of a nod to the pre-YouTube days of amateur filmmaking. Or, of course, Super 8 has nothing at all to do with Cloverfield and we're all going to be pleasantly scratching our heads this weekend after we buy tickets for some little movie called Iron Man 2 just to be able to see what this teaser entails. And don't think you'll be getting any leaks before Thursday night, because HitFix reports that this teaser is under lock and codekey until then.

[Derek]

Spoilers on the trailer.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/05/vulture_exclusive_details_of_j.html

[Stefen]

Cloverfield was pretty fucking awesome if you take away the pretty people and that idiot main character who risks not only his own life, but his friends as well just to save some piece of ass he's been seeing for a couple months.

I hope this movie is like Cloverfield but the main character is like, "Oh,shit! I need to rescue Suzie! She's hot. I gotta go back! Wait a sec -- she's not life and death hot. What the fuck am I doing? I can get another girl to have sex with me. I gotta get out of this city, pronto. There's a fucking monster on the loose!"

[Derek]

I liked Cloverfield, but don't have an interest in a prequel. I didn't mind the girl being rescued, but the guy who held the camera and did all the idiotic yapping should have been killed off early and somebody else shooting it.

[Derek]

Nothing to do with Cloverfield, which makes me happy.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/05/05/jj-abramss-super-8-has-absolutely-nothing-to-do-with-cloverfield/

[Stefen]

That's too bad. Oh, well. I just hope it has something to do with aliens/monsters.

[polkablues]

Or magic beans.  We haven't had a good magic beans movie in a while.

[MacGuffin]

We have the details on the spooky Abrams-Spielberg project
Source: Hollywood Reporter

What if Stephen King and J.K. Rowling brainstormed an idea together? Just how big would the potential audience be?

Cosmic.

Well, moviemaking heavyweights J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg began collaborating on a hush-hush project a year ago called "Super 8" that they concocted from discussions of their own early filmmaking experiences. Despite Bad Robot's Cheney-level secrecy, bits and pieces about the project (some right, some wrong) started bubbling up last week.

Well, I saw the teaser trailer last night, and here's what I can finally tell you:


Abrams has written the original script and will direct the film this fall for a summer 2011 release through Paramount, where Bad Robot resides. Spielberg is producing the project, along with Abrams and his producing partner Bryan Burk. The film will be in the $45 million-$50 million range.

It has nothing to do with "Cloverfield" and will be shot traditionally (i.e. not hand-held). It's potentially a huge movie for Paramount, despite its midrange budget, which is why it's got a slot during Paramount's already crowded 2011 summer slate.

The studio will have to fit it in with "Thor," "Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom," "Transformers 3," "First Avenger: Captain America" and the Abrams-produced "Mission: Impossible 4." (UPDATE: Paramount has shifted "M:i4's" tentative Memorial Day release date back to Dec. 16.) And "Star Trek 2" isn't expected until June 29, 2012, with an as-yet-unfinished screenplay by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Damon Lindelof, so Abrams could still direct that after "Super 8" if he chose (which, technically, he hasn't yet).

But on to the trailer.

It's 90 seconds long and plays out with utter simplicity. I'll leave it to others to ruin the surprises for the multitudes flocking to see it run in front of "Iron Man 2's" midnight screenings tonight (the trailer is not actually attached to the "IM2" reels, though they are locked away together in combo-locked canisters as they're delivered this morning to theaters at 8 a.m.).

But it's straightforward, effective and very, very enticing. Abrams shot it independently of the actual film shoot about a month ago, and the Bad Robot team cut together the teaser while putting together his new NBC series "Undercovers" and the trailer for their November release "Morning Glory" over the past month.

In terms of tweaking audience appetite for absolutely having to see the movie, Abrams and Spielberg are masters. This quick, visceral and creepy tease of "Super 8" certainly does the trick.

What it doesn't let anyone in on is the plot of the movie or the rest of the context that we had heard actually generated the idea. Namely, the possibility that a group of kids in 1979 are playing around making movies with their Super 8 cameras (as Abrams and Spielberg did as kids) and accidentally capture something ... sinister, on film.

Now, despite all our requests, Abrams and camp have refused to confirm anything about the plot. Abrams has said he doesn't want to comment on this -- he'd rather maintain the mystery and let the images speak for themselves.

Fair enough, and certainly expected. So take all these plot descriptions you're reading around the web with a giant heap of salt.

But the project is being produced by Amblin along with Bad Robot. So if you can imagine the supernatural styles of current BR and early '80s Spielberg combined, you should have a pretty good idea of where all this is going.

Bad Robot's first feature project, "Cloverfield," was rolled out in a similarly out-of-nowhere fashion, its teaser also filmed and cut together independent of the movie shoot. That teaser was thrown on the front of "Transformers" when it hit theaters in the summer of 2007. That monster movie ultimately grossed $168 million worldwide for Paramount when it opened in January 2008.

But again, "Super 8" has nothing to do with "Cloverfield." And "Super 8" is a solo J.J. Abrams movie, something we've never seen before and something sure to play much bigger.

For added pleasure, if you want to get an explanation from Abrams himself about why he handles his creative life with such passionate protectiveness, check out this TED speech he gave two years ago about the Mystery Box.

As for "Super 8," we're all gonna have to wait another year until that mysterious train pulls into the station.

[Stefen]

I love when JJ Abrams is doing shit like this instead of hacking it up.

This is at or near the top of my list for 2011.

[Pubrick]

I love when JJ Abrams is doing shit like this instead of hacking it up.

This is at or near the top of my list for 2011.

when is he hacking it up?

working with cruise was a calculated choice to show ppl he was in the big leagues. i wouldn't be surprised if his secretive shit brings the attention of malick, the wachowskis, and other ultra secret amazing ppl so they can hang out and trade like secret handshakes or someshit.

[RegularKarate]

I expected more from this trailer...
for example, something.

[matt35mm]

They've already started with the viral marketing.  At the end of the teaser, there are letters that flash before the title comes up, which spell "Scariest Thing I Ever Saw."

So, of course:

http://www.scariestthingieversaw.com/ (which was registered by Paramount)

Leads you to an old-school DOS type emulator and ends with it having to load a lot of data, which will finish loading on May 15th I think.  It's clear that there's going to be a whole year of little clues leaking out, for those few who are into that sort of thing.

[Derek]

I love when JJ Abrams is doing shit like this instead of hacking it up.

This is at or near the top of my list for 2011.

The two movies he's done are great.

[Stefen]

I wasn't feeling either of them. Star Trek just felt hippified. Haven't cared for his television shows either.

I'm super-duper excited for this though.

[Pubrick]

Haven't cared for his television shows either.

you just won the TV equivalent of the thread where you embarrass yourself with movies you haven't CARED FOR.

he's about as far as you can get from "hack". hacks are ppl who try to do what he does but without any real inspiration, hack is HEROES. Lost is the real thing. it's like saying Tarantino was a hack when he made Pulp Fiction when in fact he redefined what hack means by creating a new template for everyone TO hack. and no this doesn't negate my QT hate cos i admit his 90s output was genuinely brilliant.. before he himself became a hack.

in conclusion, this is your favourite film: