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July 10, 2007

J.J. Abrams Licenses MSTRKRFT, Excites Geeks Everywhere With Weird Trailer

Too busy seeing shows this weekend to see Shia and Optimus Prime bond, but everybody's buzzing about the trailer for a mysterious J.J. Abrams flick that debuted before Transformers. All we know is that it's out 1/18/08, and that we love LOST. And so let's extend the grand tradition of finding flighty music-related reasons to post about J.J's brainchild to his latest endeavor. For this, we turn to reader Janet, who writes...

In the teaser for the new Abrams production which has no name but only known as Cloverfield the MSTRKRFT remix of Wolfmother's "Woman" plays in the background at around the 37 sec mark.
Watch it here. She's right! That's at least 1.5 seconds of said remix -- we'd recognize those vowel-phobic sounds anywhere. Thank you, J.J., for continuously throwing us a bone. SO our net sleuthing has turned up precious little. IMDB lists it as Untitled J.J. Abrams Project, with this plot synopsis:
Revolves around a monster attack in New York as told from the point of view of a small group of people.
People be calling it Cloverfield, which IMDB says is a "fake working title." And the online hunt has begun, turning up 1-18-08.com, an awesome site where you can push photos around with iPhone-like scrolling animation. And that's about it.

So much for the bone throwing. Half-expecting a USB drive full of footage to turn up in a Portugese bathroom stall. Who's got clues?

Posted at 10:04 AM
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18 Comments

CRYPTIC!

Posted by: red at 07/10/07 10:41 AM | Reply
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According to the preview credits and imdb, unfortunately J.J. is only producing. He didn't write or direct. It was, however, written by Drew Goddard, a LOST and Alias writer, and directed by Matt Reeves, one of his old pals from the Felicity days. In any case, it looks pretty exciting. Reminds me of last years throwback korean monster flick, The Host...

Posted by: antidote at 07/10/07 10:42 AM | Reply
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the company running the cloverfield viral marketing campaign is actually the same as the one behind the nine inch nails one. so maybe a hidden usb drive isn't so far away.

Posted by: kevin at 07/10/07 11:05 AM | Reply
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JJ Abrams is terrible...I mean MI3? Armageddon? Alias??? Who honestly gives a shit about this...I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

Posted by: EnchantingWizardofRhythem at 07/10/07 11:41 AM | Reply
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the monster in the movie is being referred to as the parasite. if go to the site listed above, you can play a puzzle game that has the eventual payoff of showing a glimpse of the monster. hit the star that opens the email window and send a message, and you'll receive instructions for the puzzle.

there also is http://www.ethanhaswaswrong.blogspot.com

on IMDB, a guy posting cryptic in character messages that have color coded words. If you put them together, they spell out more messages. He also had a few comments that were posted as ASCII characters that were fun to decode.

wiki had some clues that were removed. the entry for the date january 18th, 2008 it said "there could have been more time. it will begin twenty seven minutes after midnight."

Posted by: ryan at 07/10/07 11:47 AM | Reply
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i hear the monster is actually an intelligent cloud of black smoke that scans people's memories before deciding to eat/spare them. that or godzilla.

Posted by: seth at 07/10/07 12:37 PM | Reply
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ethanhaaswasright.com and ethanhaaswaswrong.com were not made by anyone involved with the movie. JJ Abrams sent a message to Ain't it Cool News saying as much. He did however state that they've put up a bunch of websites that no one's found yet.

Posted by: Greg at 07/10/07 12:46 PM | Reply
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Wow, all that was written in Hindi, Ive been trying to translate it, but to no avail.

Posted by: Ryan at 07/10/07 12:58 PM | Reply
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"Half-expecting a USB drive full of footage to turn up in a Portuguese bathroom stall."

I LOL'd.

Posted by: Chris at 07/10/07 1:07 PM | Reply
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Rumor has it that this website has something to do with the movie.

Posted by: macht at 07/10/07 1:15 PM | Reply
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This website: http://slusho.jp/index.html

Posted by: macht at 07/10/07 1:29 PM | Reply
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there is some nice viral marketing going on over at IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1060277/board/nest/79048874

and 'crackV' or another marketer recapped the IMDB posts here:
http://www.firstshowing.net/2007/06/29/jj-abrams-top-secret-trailer-for-cloverfield-in-front-of-transformers/

check out slusho.jp, its SUPPOSED to be a viral site.

i'm getting way to into this.


Posted by: greg at 07/10/07 1:39 PM | Reply
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I just spent my day with this movie site stuff.
Wikipedia has a good break down of everything.
Check out www.theparasite.com with a countdown clock (hint: do a select all and see if anything pops up that wasn't there) hit the link that will bring you to www.1-18-08.com (the film site).
Do some google searching and you find www.ethanwasright.com with 5 puzzles/games to figure out.
And if you want some help do another google search and you find: http://ethanhaaswaswrong.blogspot.com.
They give you all sorts of clues to help with the puzzles if you need it and then there is a mile long chain of comments that analyze all different aspects of the sites, trailor, photos, blogs.
I think there is a few plants in there fueling the fire of getting the hype going.

Posted by: Folkhero at 07/10/07 4:53 PM | Reply
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who cares about this movie, mstrkrft rules

Posted by: not me at 07/10/07 9:49 PM | Reply
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call of the cthulhu

Posted by: kav at 07/10/07 11:10 PM | Reply
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It's meant to just be a remake of Godzilla isn't it?

Posted by: Andrew at 07/11/07 7:53 AM | Reply
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chrono trigger, anyone?

Posted by: eric at 07/11/07 9:07 AM | Reply
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