The Top Secret Trailer

As I'm sure most of you have heard, the trailer sweeping theatres (that's right, I said trailer and not film) and getting everyone talking this summer is the J.J. Abrams trailer that has been playing before The Transformers movie. Why are people talking about it? Is it especially good? Well . . . it's pretty good, actually. It's not the greatest trailer I've ever seen, but it's pretty cool.

But the real reason it's got tongues wagging is because in this day and age, where plots to movies and television shows are leaked to the Internet before they make it out of writers' meetings, where signed contracts and greenlit projects make headlines, where no one can click on a camcorder without the rest of the world knowing they're about to film something — NO ONE knows about this film. They don't know what it's called, they don't know what it's about, when he started filming it . . . nothing. All anyone knows is that JJ has been busily working on Star Trek. But this film? Nothing.

I first heard about it about two weeks ago when my sister-in-law dropped by and told me how much she hated the Transformers movie, but said the one saving grace was this wicked trailer that had preceded it. It was confusing, and at the very end simply said it was by JJ Abrams, and that it was coming out in January. No cast, no title . . . nothing beyond what she saw. She said the closest thing she can remember to it is the trailer for the Blair Witch Project. Now I've had links or stories or something sent to me almost every day about it, and I figured I should finally talk about it.

And even the trailer has been mired in secrecy. It goes up on YouTube every single day, only to get yanked back down again. I could try posting a link to YouTube, but I'm sure it'll be gone by tomorrow. For now, I'll post the video that's currently up, and maybe I'll just have to update this daily:

At this point, the speculation is that the film is called Cloverfield, and it's JJ's Godzilla-type picture. Further fuzzying things is the Web site Ethan Haas Was Right, an alternate reality game that some are speculating is tied to the movie. Much like Lost, this game involves putting together intricate puzzles to find clues that give you more puzzles.

Maybe we should think of this as this summer's Lost Experience.