Ever since it was revealed last week that a teaser trailer for a secret JJ Abrams movie, called Super 8, was going to be attached to prints of Iron Man 2 in the US, the online movie world has been in meltdown over what exactly the film is. Is it a sequel/prequel to Cloverfield? The zombie movie Abrams is producing? It is the rumoured tie-up between him and Spielberg? Well, with Iron Man 2 opening last night in America it didn’t take long for parts of the picture to emerge, or for the first bootlegs to show up online (UPDATE: we’ve now replaced the bootleg version with the proper hi-res teaser trailer).
Super 8 does indeed involve both Abrams and Spielberg (and has nothing to do with Cloverfield or zombies), with the latter as a producer and the former producing, creating the story and possible directing (JJ hasn’t decided yet, although he did direct the teaser). So what’s it all about? Well, this is Abrams, so you wouldn’t expect the trailer to actually tell us, would you? However along with some whizz bang special effects, the teaser does reveal that something is coming in summer 2011 and it’s powerful and seemingly angry.
The film supposedly originated in conversations between Spielberg and Abrams about what they liked in movies, their early influences, and what made Spielbergs 70s and 80s flicks so special. The idea is to go for the tone of Close Encounters and ET, but updated. We also known that the name supposedly refers to kids running around making Super 8 movies, who unwittingly capture something unexpected with their cameras. What that unexpected thing is hasn’t been revealed.
Despite people capturing things on Super 8 cameras, we’ve been promised it won’t use the Cloverfield shaky cam style and will be relatively modestly budgeted (for something Abrams and Spielberg are involved in) in the $45-50 million range. There’s also a website that’s gone live at super8-movie.com, although there’s pretty much nothing on there yet. However if you want to see the teaser, click below.
And even with the teaser, the film is still pretty much a complete mystery.