Much like in 2008, Bad Robot has surprised us with the release of a Cloverfield film, and this time, both the release and the finished product are decidedly more impressive. 10 Cloverfield Lane ditches the POV camera gimmick that seemed so popular a few years ago, and instead goes a more traditional blocking and stage route. As for the release, it was hard enough to sneak a film through production in 2008, and that was before there were smartphones everywhere. The internet has made filming in secrecy much more difficult, so the fact that no one knew about this until the Super Bowl ad aired, is a feat onto itself.
Over the next few weeks the internet will be exploding with excitement over the new Star Wars movie. This is great news for all movie fans, but it does mean that some things get lost in the shuffle. You see before The Force Awakens, way back in 1979 there was a movie which also focused on a planet far, far away. This planet however was hellishly cold, had decayed and shrunken dwarf corpses working on it (a little like jawas I guess) and had a sinister Tall Man in charge of the proceedings.
As you may know, last month, J.J. Abrams teased a trailer for a mysterious new project he was working on that wasn’t Star Wars Episode VII. In true Abrams form, he didn’t let on as to what the project was and the internet dissolved into a rumor frenzy. One popular theory was that this was a promo for Believe, an upcoming TV project from Abrams and Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron.
Earlier this week, J.J. Abrams not only revealed to EW the second half of the trailer, but the usually tight lipped Abrams revealed the mystery behind the project itself.
The project is a book called S. based on an idea by Abrams and written by Doug Dorst, an American novelist and short story writer who is the author of the award winning novel, Alive in Necropolis.
S. is described as being “about the relationship between a grad student named Eric and a college senior named Jennifer. They trade notes in the margins of a (fictional) 1949 novel by a mysterious author named V.M. Straka.”
In typical Abrams tradition, S. will go beyond the ordinary and contains the novel within the novel as well as plenty of handwritten notes between Jennifer and Eric “a conversation that plunges them into the unknown,”. S. will also expand the reading experience, with extra details such as newspaper clippings and a napkin with a map drawn on it.
Abrams told EW “I could not be more excited for people to get their hands on this book. It is difficult to describe because while it is a compelling mystery and love story, it is also much more than that. The work that everyone has done on S. is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Frankly, I’m amazed it was even possible to do this project at all.”
S. is to be published by Little, Brown on Oct. 29.
Grizzly Bomb 