JJ Abrams Finally Speaks Up About Cloverfield Or NOT

Update: When we originally found this quote from JJ Abrams on Jeff Wells' Hollywood Elsewhere website, the tenses were in first person ("he" was "I"), as if they were directly quoted from Abrams. Shortly after we posted the story, Wells changed his story from "Producer JJ Abrams" to "A guy in the pipeline of producer J.J. Abrams", and updated all the quotes to third person. (You can see part of what was originally written om the Google Blog search result image above, or you can click here). Jeff Wells made this change without a retraction, which leads us to believe that Paramount or someone from JJ's staff contacted Wells to unquote him. Either way, I find it really disappointing and unprofessional of Wells not to post a retraction. Please know that we would NEVER alter a quote for a story.

Abrams is "very active on this one, as he plans to be on all Bad Robot projects. The only things he've been involved with which he hasn't really had any creative role were What About Brian and Six Degrees — both shows that existed before Bad Robot really opened for business (meaning, when he put the team together). Cloverfield is an idea Abrams had had over a year ago, which he then sold to Paramount. The point-of-view thing (Handicam) is the whole movie. Scenes from the trailer are in the film. Abrams got a really talented guy (Drew Goddard) to write (they've worked together on Alias and, presently, Lost), and Matt Reeves to direct (he co-created Felicity and he's pretty damn genius-level)." [via: HElsewhere]

"Bad Robot and Paramount will be announcing the real title shortly."

The source also confirms that the movie will be released on January 18th 2008. Many people have speculated that the date was set for another trailer or a marketing reveal/rollout. So there you have it.