The Hollywood Reporter: Risky Business

Someone has seen 'Cloverfield' ...

...and has lived to tell about it.

"Cloverfield" is the super-secret J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie. Paramount has been waging a stealth campaign on it, showing teaser trailers, barely giving away the plot, using secret names for the project, strong-arming journos into compliance or risk facing the combined mighty wrath of Abrams and the studio. It set for release Jan. 18.

But last week...well, last week there was a secret screening of the movie on the Paramount lot. People in suits saw it. The movie is close to being done but for some effects shots.

The person we talked to was very afraid of Abrams and Paramount too, but we did find out a few things:

1) The whole movie is in the mold of "The Blair Witch Project"/shaky home video camera. "It was bit disorienting in the beginning, but then you get really into it," said our guy.

2) Monster...or monsters? There's more than one!

3) Our guy liked it: "It definitely lives up to the hype."

There you have it: a vague opinion from someone you don't know. (By Borys Kit)

Spock and Spock

When JJ Abrams was announcing that “Heroes” villain Zachary Quinto was going to play Spock in the new Star Trek movie during the Paramount presentation in Hall H, Comic Con’s biggest hall holding a very excited 6500 people, Leonard Nimoy was backstage, alone, watching the proceedings on monitors with quiet bemusement.
The crowd went ape when Quinto strolled onstage, exactly like the filmmakers had hoped. Nimoy, meanwhile, smiled at the reaction, his thin lips turning up and his eyes a’twinkle. But you only saw that if you were staring. (I was. Sue me, it’s Spock!)
“Zachary, you rule!” someone yelled from the congregation and everyone cheered again.
Nimoy smiles a bit more, this time nodding very much like a proud parent watching a child receive like an award.

Abrams May Direct King's Dark Tower

The whole J.J. Abrams saga at Paramount is fascinating. Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner first brought the Lost creator in to direct Mission: Impossible 3. Thrilled with the results (which were decidely lackluster at the domestic boxoffice), recently departed studio president Gail Berman assigned Abrams to rejuvenate the dormant Star Trek franchise, which he is still doing as producer—but studio sources say that he is not interested in directing. So now the word on the street—denied as premature by Paramount flacks—is that he will direct the Stephen King series The Dark Tower.

Here's Stax's IGN report:

IGN has exclusively learned that J.J. Abrams is poised to direct The Dark Tower, based on the Stephen King literary series. Sources advised us that an official announcement is forthcoming. We have been unable to determine whether Dark Tower will be a film project or a TV miniseries, although the latter is a more likely prospect given the complex nature of King's seven-book series. Given Abrams' success on the small screen -- and King's well known love for the Abrams-produced TV series Lost -- the tube seems a better fit for The Dark Tower.

Sources also added that Abrams is indeed only producing Star Trek XI. It was recently reported that Abrams would not direct Trek XI, as many had assumed, but would instead turn his attention to a secret Paramount project titled Cloverfield. Might Cloverfield be a codename for The Dark Tower? Or a completely separate project? (Interestingly enough, Entertainment Weekly did an interview last year with King, Abrams and his Lost producing partner Damon Lindelof, who reportedly
brought a rare first edition of The Gunslinger to the meeting.)

[Photo by Neil Motteram]

JJ Abrams Pacts with Par, WBTV

After several months of active courtship by all major studios, J.J. Abrams has planted his flag at Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Television. The feature component of his new deal at Paramount is expected to kick in immediately, while the six-year television pact with WBTV will effectively begin in June 2007. See HR's story.

M:I:3 Failed to Keep Mythology Alive

HR's Gregg Kilday puts on his Joseph Campbell-meets-Bruce Sterling cap in suggesting that M:i:3 is off to a sluggish start due to its lack of a viral mythology with fans via the internerd and elsewhere:

Thanks to television and the Internet, the way core fans engage with their favorite entertainment is changing in a way that might have simply left "M:I-3" behind the curve.

Blame it on "The X-Files." That ground-breaking TV series -- with its ever-more convoluted story lines about alien invaders and government cover-ups -- popularized the notion of creating a "mythology," a growing catalog of hints, clues and underlying relationships, that enriches a tale.

Full story.

Earlier: One person's surprise mythological encounter with M:i:3 is another person's phone call to the bomb squad. Link. [posted by Sheigh]

Cruise Is No Longer Invulnerable

Fact: The weekend numbers for Mission: Impossible: III were not what they should be. The question is, was it because of Cruise's off-camera behavior, or because the franchise was winding down, or because this is not a real holiday weekend? Next weekend will truly tell the tale. But something in the realm of $60 million was what Paramount was looking for. This is not a disaster. Yet. But these tentpoles—entirely paid by the studio—are not supposed to disappoint. They are supposed to pay for everything else. If Paramount already rewarded J.J. Abrams with reinventing the Star Trek franchise—which I think was a brilliant idea—that presupposes that they were not unhappy with what he did here. And did not see this lackluster b.o. performance coming.

M:i:III Reviews

Salon film Critic Stephanie Zacharek goes after Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise, reactive but impermeable, has spent his whole career learning how to make faces, mastering the semaphore of sensitivity. But listening to his fellow actors in a scene -- or even just acknowledging their presence -- is still beyond him.

Along the same lines: Manohla Dargis in the NYT:

IT would be a stretch to say that Tom Cruise needs a hit. What this guy needs is an intervention, someone who can help the star once known as Tom Terrific return to the glory days, when the only things most of us really knew about him came from the boilerplate continually recycled in glossy magazines, sealing him in a bubble of blandness and mystery.

The NYDN tracks Cruise's tireless NYC promo tour; and Jami Bernard adds her pulse-pounding review. And Roger Ebert and John Anderson have their say.

Ladies Not Lovin' the Cruise

Paramount is trying to reach out to the ladies after recent numbers show that M:i:III and Tom Cruise aren't tracking well with female audiences. Cruise's Q rating is also sliding:

A recent study by Marketing Evaluations Inc. suggests that Mr. Cruise's popularity has dipped this year. Mr. Cruise's "Q Score," which measures the percentage of people who rate a performer one of their favorites, hovered between 27% and 30% in studies conducted in 2000, 2002 and 2004. His negative rating during that period was between 12% and 14%.

But in 2006, Mr. Cruise's Q Score skidded to 19% while his negative rating jumped to 31%. "He ought to keep quiet and just act," says Steven Levitt, president of Marketing Evaluations, of Manhasset, N.Y.

Publicly criticizing a new mother's battle with baby blues hasn't helped:

Hollywood marketing executives say one problematic moment for some female fans may have been his attack last year on the actress Brooke Shields for her use of drugs to treat postpartum depression.

"At that moment, he moved from the realm of acceptable eccentricity to something scary and cruel," says Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center, which studies the impact of entertainment on society. "It's easier to forgive his joking about placenta than what is perceived to be an attack on a vulnerable woman's real problem."

WSJ.com has the story. [posted by Sheigh]

M:i:III's Tough Girls

Tom Cruise wasn't the only one doing stunts on the new Mission Impossible sequel. Alias creator J.J. Abrams has plenty of experience with tough femme heroines, and he put his M:i:III heroines through their paces, reports the the NYDN.

Cruise In My News Box

I bought an LATimes in Larchmont this morning and when I opened the newspaper box, Lalo Schifrin's classic M:i:III theme started playing. I grabbed my paper and slammed the box shut which triggered the theme again. I can't say I've ever had an interactive newspaper box experience before. But then I've never had to deal with a logoized laughing urinal cake either.

[posted by Sheigh]

ADD: The promotion misfired Friday, reports the LAT, when a digital music device inside a Santa Clarita LAT coin machine was mistaken by customers for a bomb and was blown up by an LA County sheriff's arson squad.

Lost's J.J. Abrams Lectures

In this video podcast, ABC's "Lost" writer-producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach gives a lecture to a group of students at the University of Michigan.

"We all believe ourselves to be artists," he tells the co-eds. "It takes a certain amount of ego to be a writer because it springs from the notion that what you say matters."

Speak for yourself. Link

[posted by Sheigh]

With Cruise as Punching Bag, Hoffman Steals 'M:I3'

Initial "M:I3" test audiences cheered when Philip Seymour Hoffman kicked the crap out of Tom Cruise if we're to believe Roger Friedman's anonymously sourced report.

Jeff Wells also reads the tea leaves at Hollywood Elsewhere:

There are indications all over the map that a portion of the public doesn't believe that the 43 year-old Cruise is Tom Terrific anymore -- they think he's Tom Wacko.

I got going on this jag after hearing some National Research Group numbers that were released on Thursday, 4.13. They supposedly indicate the public's interest in seeing Mission: Impossible: 3. I got them from a single source (I tried double- confirming with other marketing people but nobody was around due to the Good Friday holiday) but "they're straight from the NRG report," I was told, and "in black and white."

Two figures got my attention: the 37% who said they're definitely interested and the 9% who said they're definitely not interested. My source says that at this same point before the opening of John Woo's Mission Impossible: 2 -- almost exactly six years ago -- the definite interest number was in the mid 40s and that the definite non-interests were more like 2%.

If you go by the NRG figures, there's clearly diminished interest in M:I:3 compared to the readings for Mission: Impossible 2, and the negatives are obviously higher also. 

9% definite non-interest now vs. 2% defininite non-interest then -- that's a different climate. But a Paramount spokesperson disputed the 9% definite non-interest figure, contending that it's actually "30% lower."

Link [posted by Sheigh]

J.J. Abrams At Home, But On a 'Mission'

Tom Cruise gifted his "Mission Impossible III" director a Segway, which you have to figure is less dubious than a weekend retreat for the whole family at God Xenu's personal ranch.

But those are the only beans J.J. Abrams willingly spills about his headline mongering Mi:III star in what is an otherwise idly amusing Q&A with NYTimes.

Apparently Mr. Abrams digs robots (bad ones), drives a Prius (although he misses his Porsche) and the person he'd most like to meet is Aristotle... I always liked that one 'Hope is a waking dream' too. Although, 'We are what we repeatedly do,' is a bit of a bummer. Link

[posted by Sheigh]