J.J. Abrams loves a good mystery, and has built a whole career on it. “Lost” is one of the more fascinating, baffling and frustrating pop culture questions of the new century (we hope he ends it in the same way as the original “The Prisoner,” if only to see the internet explode with fanboy rage), he managed to film “Star Trek” with relatively few leaks, and, most notably, he snuck a secret trailer for “Cloverfield” into theaters, before the project had been officially announced. Now, it looks like he’s up to his old tricks again.
Drew McWeeny at HitFix, who was the first person to reveal details on “Cloverfield,” suggests that we’ll see a trailer for a new Abrams project attached to “Iron Man 2” this weekend. McWeeny says that the project’s called “Super 8” (which sounds like a codename, but everyone thought that about “Cloverfield” too), that Abrams is not directing, and that it’s unrelated to the recently announced collaboration with Steven Spielberg. Furthermore, he’s heard rumors that the project is a “Cloverfield” sequel of some kind, although that seems less rock-solid at this point.
There are some major security issues in place for “Iron Man 2,” with the trailers and final reel being kept in an electronically locked canister, and, as the post-credits tag for Jon Favreau’s superhero movie leaked a week ago, we imagine that there’s something top-secret in the trailers for sure (although, could it be possible that a new coda will make an appearance? Nick Fury’s scene in the first “Iron Man” was kept from reviewers. We saw the tag at the end of a public screening in London over the weekend, but it’s not unthinkable, although unlikely, that North American audiences might get something different.)
Hitfix have taken a couple of public baths recently on scoops, but they’re generally reliable, and seem to have excellent sources in the Abrams camp. It’s possible that, considering the title (which refers to an early format of readily-available home film camera), it could be a period take on the found footage monster movie that was pioneered in “Cloverfield,” but we’re taking a wild guess here. While we don’t love everything that Abrams does, he has a rare eye for smart popular entertainment that really connects with people, and we love that, like Christopher Nolan, he understands the value of secrecy and surprise (although, if every filmmaker took the same approach, but we’d be out of a job pretty fast…)