1-18-08 Project Cloverfield - Warning! Spoilers

I get a lot of emails and comments in regard to the true '1-18-08' website which is the official site for the movie. The majority of them are about flipping the pictures over and the roar that occurs about 6 minutes after opening the site up.

Here's a quick summary of the site to help those getting starting on this mysterious movie. To date the film has no official title. Most of us call it 'Cloverfield' (production codename) or '1-18-18' (release date). As of last week, Paramount Studios is referencing the movie no longer as "The Untitled JJ Abrams" movie but is calling it '1-18-08.'

The '1-18-08' website is the official site of the movie. It gained notice back in July a week or two after the trailer appeared before the Transformers. It featured a single picture that you could move but not flip over. Four more pictures would appear and then no updates occurred.

Somewhere in early August it happened that the pictures could be flipped over. There's some writing on 2 of the pictures. August 23rd saw the site go down for a day and redirect toward Paramount Pictures, who is distributing the film. The site came back up later that day with no visible changes.

August 24th saw the audio file of the monster roar for the first time. The sound file was added during the downtime the day before and if you opened up the site and left it untouched you would hear the monster roar about 6 minutes later.

Here is a sample of the roar from the 1-18-08 website so you don't have to wait 6 minutes:

Someone made a fairly decent fan trailer for '1-18-08' which was released this week. It features a reporter for the news station seen in the original trailer. One viewing of the clip will instantly give you a very amateurish feel with pieces lifted from the original trailer.

However, I can't knock the creators of this fan film too much. They did a good job and so far have put our more this month than JJ Abrams and Co.

So when will trailer 2 surface? There have been a couple of rumors that one would show up during the showing of 'Resident Evil' which opened last week or during 'Stardust' a few months back.

The safe money says the trailer will be controlled by JJ Abrams and Paramount. This movie has a lot of buzz and Paramount is probably going to release the trailer (if they have a say) during the opening of one of their movies. 'Resident Evil' was released by Sony and it doesn't make sense to promote the opening of a rival studios film unless they are willing to return to favor.

Dreamworks is currently a part of Paramount so looking at the 2 studios fall release schedules there are a couple of big movies coming out:

Oct 5: The Farrelly Brothers “THE HEARTBREAK KID”
Oct 21: “THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE” A drama staring Halle Berry
Nov 2: “BEE MOVIE” Jerry Seinfeld's CG animated tale
Nov 16: "BEOWULF" Angelina Jolie
Dec 21: “SWEENEY TODD -The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" Tim Burton and Johnny Depp

My money is on "Beowulf" for a couple of reasons. First, it's the only film on the list produced only by Paramount (no Dreamworks) and is tracking real high with it's buzz. "Beowulf" has gotten a lot of buzz for its CG-laden retelling of the classic story as well as a huge 'geek' boost from all the CG animation of Angelina Jolie, which was promoted during July's Comic-con.

Second, November 16th is 2 months before the main release date for our movie and a perfect time to kick up the buzz and interest in '1-18-08' during the busy holiday season. The audience for both movies matches up great.

Of course the bad news is that it's still 1 1/2 months away and I don't want to wait that long.

Ain't It Cool News (AICN) is giving a report that FX master Phil Tippett is working on the JJ Abrams Project Cloverfield. No details were given and Tippett's been in the business long enough you won't see an accidental leak.

Tippett Studios was formed by the talented Phil who made a great career in Hollywood doing monsters and stop-motion FX for movies. CG is now incorporated into his studio but Phil is well known for creating monster designs. His work has ranged from Star Wars to Starship Troopers

A quick note about JJ Abrams related 'Lost.' The new fall season has started this week and many of you will not see 'Lost' in the lineup even though it is still active. The producers and ABC have agreed to air the episodes in sequence starting in early February. So, '1-18-08' will have arrived 3 weeks before new episodes of even 'Lost' air.

A new hatch, The Orchid, was exposed during Comic-con last summer involving more training videos: