Does anyone remember when a mysterious teaser for a new J.J. Abrams movie appeared in front of Michael Bay’s Transformers three years ago? We do, and at the time, it was one of the most exciting and surprising things to happen in quite some time, because it effectively kicked off an intense viral campaign that had many people playing a guessing game about every aspect of a movie that turned out to be Cloverfield.
Apparently, J.J. Abrams and Paramount are at it again, and thanks to the detecting skills of Drew McWeeny at HitFix–yes, the former “Moriarty” from Ain’t It Cool is now playing “Sherlock Holmes”–we can expect another “secret” teaser trailer in front of Iron Man 2 on Friday.
Except this time, not even the theater projectionists will be able to have a look at it before Thursday because Paramount has sent all the trailers for the movie in a locked mystery can that requires a combination code they won’t even receive before Thursday afternoon.
The HitFix story even has a picture of the instruction letter that comes along with the reels received at some theaters:
The card says that the secrecy is to “protect the film from any possible piracy issues” except that the movie will already have been playing internationally for a week and it very specifically says that it contains only the first and last reels of the movie plus the trailers.
According to McWeeny, the reason for this secrecy is because Paramount has included the first teaser trailer for an Abrams project called “Super 8,” which looks to be at least thematically some sort of sequel to the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield. Although the movie hasn’t even begun to film yet, it’s doubtful Abrams will direct it. Cloverfield director Matt Reeves is currently busy with the vampire movie Let Me In, so theoretically, it could be his next project.
So far, no one has seen this mystery teaser and no one’s likely to see it for the next few days. Who knows if Paramount will even make it available online? … at least officially. We can probably expect bootleg versions of it by Friday now that the secret may be out.
You can read more of McWeeny’s analysis and info on the project over at HitFix.
UPDATE: Vulture has more on the trailer which definitely goes into SPOILER territory. Read the following only if you want to know what’s shown in the trailer…
Insiders familiar with the trailer tell us that it shows a bunch of kids who are shooting a movie with a Super 8 camera in the seventies or eighties. When they develop the film, they notice that there’s an alien creature in the frame. Our sources also say that Super 8 is absolutely connected to 2008’s Cloverfield (possibly a prequel, but not a sequel).
