Has the man behind 'Lost' found himself a monster hit?

Published on Wednesday 16 January 2008 20:32

YOU might think in this age of instant global communication that film fans know pretty much everything there is to know about every big Hollywood blockbuster long before it opens. But, until recently, no-one knew anything for certain about the latest film from JJ Abrams, the creator of Lost – not even the title.

It is an increasingly common complaint that audiences get all the major action scenes, plot twists and jokes in the trailers, and the films often come as a let-down.

But no-one could accuse Abrams of giving too much away for his new film. The first trailer consisted of shaky footage of young people at a party, brief scenes of panic outside, an explosion, what sounds like a roar and the head of the Statue of Liberty hurtling down the street. The trailer did not even carry the name of the film. Until quite recently, it was listed on the Film Distributors' Association's release schedule in the UK as "Untitled JJ Abrams film".

Now we know it is called Cloverfield, which sounds like some nostalgic drama about growing up in New England in the 1950s. In fact, the title comes from the name of the street where Abrams was based. It was initially used as a codename for the film, and they stuck with it.

Abrams is a guy who knows how to keep audiences guessing, as Lost proved with its story of a bunch of plane-crash survivors marooned on some exotic shore.

He kept virtually everything about Cloverfield under wraps. There are no big-name stars; actors were recruited from TV; they signed up without seeing a script, and, when they did eventually get scripts, they were not allowed to take them home.

Abrams and Paramount Pictures very carefully controlled the release of information and misinformation – giving away T-shirts at a comics convention, bearing the name Slusho, which is the name of a fictional drink from his television series Alias.

The strategy was that, by putting out so little concrete information, Abrams would whip up curiosity and anticipation in chat rooms and web forums. He would then drip-feed social networking sites, including MySpace and Facebook, and it would grow from there, a so-called viral campaign.

Newspapers were desperate to join in the hype and variously reported, or speculated, that Cloverfield was a spin-off from the Lost TV series, a new version of Godzilla and a film about an anime character called Voltron, after someone misheard the line "It's alive" as "It's a lion".

The aim has been to create a fever pitch of excitement by the time the film opens in the United States this Friday. It opens in the UK two weeks later.

The strategy echoes that for The Blair Witch Project in 1999. It relied heavily on internet buzz at a time when the worldwide web was still in its infancy. The film cost virtually nothing and became a huge, landmark, commercial hit.

Not only was Blair Witch shot as if it were amateur video footage, but those behind the marketing managed to convince a large section of the internet population that it was real and that the film was a tape that had been found after the mysterious disappearance of those who made it, in a creepy wood in Maryland.

The reach of the internet is now, of course, much greater. But on the other hand, users are much more savvy about internet marketing. And Cloverfield is a big studio movie, with a budget estimated at about 15 million, not a little independent film.

Like Blair Witch, Cloverfield presents itself as being effectively a "home movie". The film consists entirely of footage shot by the characters, though it would have been impossible to pass it off as genuine this time round – after all, the Statue of Liberty still has its head.

Major film companies have had a wary relationship with the internet, which is one of the main reasons for the current strike, with studios and writers at loggerheads over revenues from "new media".

Traditionally, film marketing includes trailers, posters, newspaper and TV adverts, merchandising and promotional giveaways. Approved journalists get access to the stars at stage-managed junkets. They are wined and dined and have their expenses reimbursed by the film companies. Film executives like to exert total control over marketing and, although studios all have websites these days, the internet is a new and unpredictable phenomenon, and those who create the content are sometimes less easy to control than professional showbiz journalists.

There was a phenomenal internet buzz about Snakes on a Plane two years ago, prompted primarily by the title. It is a great title, though, amazingly, the makers changed it to Pacific Air Flight 121 at one stage. Not only did they change it back, but they tapped into the internet buzz and shot extra footage in response to demands for a tougher, more adult drama.

Sadly, this was not so much a case of "once you have seen the trailer, you have seen the movie", as "once you have seen the title, you have seen the movie". The film did only moderate business.

But Abrams is a savvy operator and, over the past few weeks, he has released a lot more detail about Cloverfield. He admitted he was inspired by a visit to a Japanese toy store and the prevalence of Godzilla toys. He decided the US really should have its own giant monster. The idea for the Statue of Liberty's decapitated head came from a poster for the 1981 film Escape from New York, though the statue has been a potent cinematic symbol since Charlton Heston came across it on the beach at the end of Planet of the Apes.

It has also been confirmed that 9/11 was an influence, not just in terms of the deaths and the destruction of an iconic landmark, but also in the recording of the event by television, the public and even the victims. Abrams wanted a sense of the reality and immediacy of a city under attack in the modern age.

It is still unclear whether Cloverfield is truly laying down a challenge to the conventions of film production and marketing or if it is just a belated studio attempt to copy Blair Witch.

It would be a brave commentator who predicted at this stage whether Cloverfield would be a monster hit, with far-reaching implications for other studio movies, or nothing more than a snake in the grass.