Cloverfield: Perhaps the Best Kept Hollywood Secret

Everyone knows just how secretive film studios can be with their properties. They usually just release a still photo of filming, or a shot out of the movie and call it a teaser poster and then give a very vague description of the plot. Then, within four months of release time (perhaps even longer), they release a full length trailer and by then so many websites have spoiled the movie for everyone that people only see it to know whether or not it lives up to the hype.

In early 2007, J.J. Abrams, creator of the hit television program Alias, announced that he was working on a new movie. And that is all that was revealed. At the time it seemed like no big deal. Just a project that would probably be announced in a week or so. But, no announcement came. Here and there people were reporting that casting was underway for the new film. But no one knew what it was. There were no script leaks, plot speculations or anything. The only thing anyone was capable to find out, and even then it was heavily unconfirmed, was that a possible false title that it would film under was “Cloverfield”.

In the summer of that same year, in the previews of the movie “Transformers”, a very interesting movie trailer was shown before the beginning of the movie. The trailer consisted of an apartment party where a person is walking around with a video camera. Suddenly the very loud sound of an animal war is heard and the apartment begins to shake. The partygoers run outside and see a large explosion followed by part of the Statue of Liberty being thrown at the partygoers. From there the trailer ended with no title. Only the “Bad Robot” studio logo was present. The Cloverfield phenomenon was officially underway.

J.J. Abrams finally came forward and told that the movie would be a monster movie unlike anything the world has seen. When asked why he chose to work on a monster movie his response was that he had taken a trip to Japan and walked into a toy store with his son. He looked around the store and noticed that the majority of toys were Godzilla related. To which he added that he felt it was time that there was an American equivalent to Godzilla. Now, with less than three months until the much publicized release date, we know little more now then we did at the beginning. This has led many to wonder whether or not this is a healthy marketing campaign, seeing as how a large portion of the film’s awareness was spread through word of mouth. However, producers are confident that it is the same word of mouth that will make the movie a rousing success.

Programming Reviews and news provided by Dror Klar of Oklahoma High Speed Satellite Internet and New Jersey Satellite TV.