What is Cloverfield?

For those who love a good mystery, it would seem that the current master of cloak and smoke, JJ Abrams, has created yet another enigma, most of which lives online, only some of which is actually legit.

First of all, Cloverfield is a movie currently being shot in Los Angeles under the name Slusho. If you want to see a trailer for the movie, which is to be released on January 18, 2008 (1.18.08), then you should attend a screening of Transformers. Or, watch it here.



A lotta fluff and not a lotta stuff, huh? That's sort of what Mr. Abrams is going for. If you doubt this, here's what he told the geeks over at Ain't It Cool:

Regarding the online stuff you posted: yeah, we're doing some fun stuff on the web. But, obviously, if the movie doesn't kick some massive ASS, who gives a rat's about what's online? So as you can imagine, we're focusing mostly on THAT. For what it's worth, the only site of ours that people have even FOUND is the 1-18-08.com site. The others (like the Ethan Haas sites) have nothing to do with us.

Just enough to tease the uber-geeks who are having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that Lost won't air new episodes until February of '08. And, initially there was talk that this movie was somehow related to the Lost mythology, possibly some sort of Godzilla movie, or maybe even Voltron. At this point, it doesn't seem to matter what the movie might actually be about, the publicity campaign is working overtime generating interest in --- well, we don't exactly know what. Just Google for it and you'll find no less than 2 million related sites.

What the trailer appears to be about is a monster movie told from the point of view of the people on the ground. New York partygoers start out at a celebrating and recording a movie as a going away gift for a friend, and end up on the run, trying to dodge the head of the Statue of Liberty.

It's reportedly directed by Felicity's Matt Reeves and written by Lost's Drew Godard.

Rumor-mongers are spending countless hours scouring the internet for information (really, what did people do before Al Gore gave us this wonderful gift?)...so far they've come up with this and this and this and also this.

The trailer looks cool, and the scavenger hunt, when completed by someone else and posted in a neat, concise little package (hey! sorta like I just did for you!), I'll be interested. Mr. Abrams hasn't disappointed yet.