That Cloverfield Business

The one saving grace to sitting through Transformers was getting to see that wonderful, much-buzzed-about trailer for mystery-project Cloverfield (probably not it's real name), produced by JJ Abrams and written by DREW FREAKING GODDARD, Buffy/Angel/Alias/Lost writer (he wrote the Buffy-7th-season-grace Anya episode) and man-god.

Anyway, Paramount released some info about the movie today; via BD:

"Cloverfield," which revolves around a monster attack in New York as told from the point of view of a small group of people, is being produced by J.J. Abrams. It is being directed by Matt Reeves, who co-created "Felicity" with Abrams, and is written by Drew Goddard, who has worked with Abrams on "Lost" and "Alias."

Paramount greenlighted the project under a veil of heavy secrecy in February, about the same time that Abrams agreed to the take over the directing reins of the new "Star Trek" film.

The casting process was just as mysterious. No scripts or even scene pages were sent out; agents who were contacted were simply asked if their client wanted to be in the movie or not. Eventually a cast, made up mostly of relative unknowns, was put together; it includes Michael Stahl-David ("The Black Donnellys"), Odet Jasmin, Mike Vogel ("Supercross") and Lizzy Kaplan ("The Class").

The movie, which is believed to have a relatively modest budget of about $30 million, began shooting in mid-June in New York. With "Transformers" generating huge tracking numbers in the weeks before its release, the studio decided to put footage from "Cloverfield" in a teaser in front of "Transformers" to build buzz..."

So it's apparently currently filming here in NYC, but what really caught my attention was the name Lizzy Caplan - someone that's been a topic of discussion here in My...Pants lately - and Mike Vogel, whom I've had a crush on ever since he ran around filthy and tank-top-clad in the Texas Chainsaw remake. Mmmm Mike Vogel.

Anyway, the movie comes out in January and the viral marketing for the film is spreading like, er, a virus, so I expect to blah-blah-blah plenty on it over the next several months.
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