Cast Announced for SUPER 8

From ComingSoon.net:

"Paramount Pictures announced today that it has commenced principal photography on Super 8, directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek), from a screenplay by Abrams, based on his original idea.

Steven Spielberg, Abrams and Bryan Burk are producing the Amblin Entertainment/Bad Robot Production. Paramount Pictures will release the film summer 2011.

Starring Emmy-nominated Kyle Chandler ('Friday Night Lights') and Elle Fanning (Somewhere, winner of the 2010 Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion Award), the cast includes veteran actors Ron Eldard [(Black Hawk Down)] and Noah Emmerich [Cellular, The Truman Show], newcomers Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills [(Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium], and Gabriel Basso ('The Big C')."

UPDATE:

From ComingSoon.net:

"AJ Michalka, actress and one-half of the duo 78violet, announced today that she has been cast in J.J. Abrams' Super 8.

Michalka, who recently had a role in The Lovely Bones and stars in the upcoming Secretariat, will be joining a cast that includes Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich, Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills and Gabriel Basso.

Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the [sci-fi] thriller is now shooting for a Summer 2011 release."

Her sister, Aly Michalka, just starred in the hit comedy film Easy A.

Neville Page, monster maker, working on SUPER 8

From ComingSoon.net:

"Neville Page, the conceptual artist responsible for designs in Star Trek, Cloverfield, Piranha 3D, [Avatar] and the upcoming TRON: Legacy, teased information to Wired about the creature design in his next big project, Super 8.

Though he's light on details, Page does reveal that he was tasked with designing the creature after the teaser trailer was created and that J.J. Abrams showed him the footage to help get him excited.

'When that door blows open,' he says, 'it's the ultimate reveal. It's Elvis or something.'

What's more, Page hints that Abrams won't resort entirely to computer animation to bring the monster to life and that the writer/director will rely on some classic special effect work.

'I'll bet you anything there's going to be a rubber something or other at some point,' says Page."

So if they're using a rubber monster, they're really serious about making this an old-school movie. Can't wait to see and/or hear more.

J.J. Abrams' SUPER 8 trailer mysteriously appears

From ComingSoon.net:

"The teaser for J.J. Abrams' secret project Super 8, which is now playing in theaters with Iron Man 2, [is now online]. An official website for the Steven Spielberg-produced film is also now online at Super8-movie.com. The project starts shooting this fall for a summer 2011 release."



Gives off great vibes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

UPDATE:

From The Hollywood Reporter:

"What if Stephen King and J.K. Rowling brainstormed an idea together? Just how big would the potential audience be? Cosmic. Well, moviemaking heavyweights J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg began collaborating on a hush-hush project a year ago called Super 8 that they concocted from discussions of their own early filmmaking experiences. Despite Bad Robot's Cheney-level secrecy, bits and pieces about the project (some right, some wrong) started bubbling up last week. Abrams has written the original script and will direct the film this fall for a summer 2011 release through Paramount, where Bad Robot resides. Spielberg is producing the project, along with Abrams and his producing partner Bryan Burk. The film will be in the $45 million-$50 million range. It has nothing to do with Cloverfield and will be shot traditionally (i.e. not hand-held). It's potentially a huge movie for Paramount, despite its midrange budget, which is why it's got a slot during Paramount's already crowded 2011 summer slate.

The studio will have to fit it in with Thor, Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom, Transformers III, [Captain America: The First Avenger].... And [Star Trek: Untitled Sequel] isn't expected until June 29, 2012, with an as-yet-unfinished screenplay by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Damon Lindelof, so Abrams could still direct that after Super 8 if he chose (which, technically, he hasn't yet).

[The trailer is] 90 seconds long and plays out with utter simplicity. I'll leave it to others to ruin the surprises for the multitudes flocking to see it run in front of Iron Man 2's midnight screenings tonight (the trailer is not actually attached to the IM2 reels, though they are locked away together in combo-locked canisters as they're delivered this morning to theaters at 8 a.m.).
But it's straightforward, effective and very, very enticing. Abrams shot it independently of the actual film shoot about a month ago, and the Bad Robot team cut together the teaser while putting together his new NBC series 'Undercovers' and the trailer for their November release Morning Glory over the past month. In terms of tweaking audience appetite for absolutely having to see the movie, Abrams and Spielberg are masters. This quick, visceral and creepy tease of Super 8 certainly does the trick.

What it doesn't let anyone in on is the plot of the movie or the rest of the context that we had heard actually generated the idea. Namely, the possibility that a group of kids in 1979 are playing around making movies with their Super 8 cameras (as Abrams and Spielberg did as kids) and accidentally capture something ... sinister, on film.

Now, despite all our requests, Abrams and camp have refused to confirm anything about the plot. Abrams has said he doesn't want to comment on this -- he'd rather maintain the mystery and let the images speak for themselves. Fair enough, and certainly expected. So take all these plot descriptions you're reading around the web with a giant heap of salt. But the project is being produced by Amblin along with Bad Robot. So if you can imagine the supernatural styles of current BR and early '80s Spielberg combined, you should have a pretty good idea of where all this is going.

Bad Robot's first feature project, Cloverfield, was rolled out in a similarly out-of-nowhere fashion, its teaser also filmed and cut together independent of the movie shoot. That teaser was thrown on the front of Transformers when it hit theaters in the summer of 2007. That monster movie ultimately grossed $168 million worldwide for Paramount when it opened in January 2008. But again, Super 8 has nothing to do with Cloverfield. And Super 8 is a solo J.J. Abrams movie, something we've never seen before and something sure to play much bigger.

For added pleasure, if you want to get an explanation from Abrams himself about why he handles his creative life with such passionate protectiveness, check out this TED speech [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjVgF5JDq8] he gave two years ago about the Mystery Box. As for Super 8, we're all gonna have to wait another year until that mysterious train pulls into the station."

I do highly encourage people to watch that TED speech (it's 18:03) - he's enormously funny (this guy needs a comedy), informative and has fantastic opinions on great movies.

J.J. Abrams mystifying audiences again?

From ComingSoon.net:

"Does anyone remember when a mysterious teaser for a new J.J. Abrams movie appeared in front of Michael Bay's Transformers three years ago? We do, and at the time, it was one of the most exciting and surprising things to happen in quite some time, because it effectively kicked off an intense viral campaign that had many people playing a guessing game about every aspect of a movie that turned out to be Cloverfield.



Apparently, J.J. Abrams and Paramount are at it again, and thanks to the detecting skills of Drew McWeeny at HitFix--yes, the former 'Moriarty' from Ain't It Cool is now playing 'Sherlock Holmes'--we can expect another 'secret' teaser trailer in front of Iron Man 2 on Friday.

Except this time, not even the theater projectionists will be able to have a look at it before Thursday because Paramount has sent all the trailers for the movie in a locked mystery can that requires a combination code they won't even receive before Thursday afternoon.

The HitFix story even has a picture of the instruction letter that comes along with the reels received at some theaters:

The card says that the secrecy is to 'protect the film from any possible piracy issues' except that the movie will already have been playing internationally for a week and it very specifically says that it contains only the first and last reels of the movie plus the trailers.

According to McWeeny, the reason for this secrecy is because Paramount has included the first teaser trailer for an Abrams project called Super 8, which looks to be at least thematically some sort of sequel to the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield. Although the movie hasn't even begun to film yet, it's doubtful Abrams will direct it. Cloverfield director Matt Reeves is currently busy with the vampire movie Let Me In, so theoretically, it could be his next project."

UPDATE:

From ComingSoon.net:

Vulture has more on the trailer which definitely goes into SPOILER territory. Read the following only if you want to know what's shown in the trailer...

Insiders familiar with the trailer tell us that it shows a bunch of kids who are shooting a movie with a Super 8 camera in the seventies or eighties. When they develop the film, they notice that there's an alien creature in the frame. Our sources also say that Super 8 is absolutely connected to 2008's Cloverfield (possibly a prequel, but not a sequel).

UPDATE 2:

From ComingSoon.net:

"Vulture was able to catch up with J.J. Abrams last night and asked him about his secret trailer that is attached to prints of Iron Man 2 this weekend.

Abrams said, 'You have to check [out the trailer]. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with Cloverfield, despite your expert reporting.' So what is Super 8 about? 'I won't be able to tell you until it's done,' he said."

Well, Abrams has successfully kept everybody in the dark. If you haven't seen Cloverfield, take a look. It's not as scary as it looks (except for one REALLY scary scene).