Cloverfield: Teddy Hanssen Last Seen 12/07/2007
/Film reader Ignatius F informed me that a new photo has appeared on the old Cloverfield website 1-18-08.com. The photo is a Missing Flyer featuring "Teddy Hanssen last seen 12/07/2007"
Teddy Hanssen is the long-distance boyfriend of Jamie Lascano, a character who was featured extensively in the teaser trailer, but only seen in the film laying unconscious on the couch at the party. One of the viral websites, Jamieandteddy.com (password "jllovesth"), shows videoblogs made by Jamie talking about their relationship, which eventually turns sour. She was also revealed to be the roommate of Marlena. The couple met at a New York City club and dated briefly before Teddy left to go on a trip. In the fourth video, Jamie mentions 'The Cause' and says that Teddy can talk about it all he wants. In the fifth video, Teddy tells her that he's been captured by 'a company called Tagruato', but she doesn't believe him. Thinking that he was lying because he was seeing someone else, she dumped him. Included in that package was a small packet of something wrapped in silver foil with the note:
"Primary evidence. Freeze ASAP. Jamie, don't eat this."
Jamie later eat the contents of the packet mocking Teddy to her video camera in the eighth video posted on January 9th, less than a week before the Cloverfield Monster attacked New York City.
It's also worth noting that the back of the new photo features a weird logo and number in the corner:
The same logo is featured on a label on the DVD release (photo via Bloody Disgusting):
What does this all mean? I'm not quite sure. No one at Paramount has any clue about the new 1-18-08.com viral. From what I understand, the whole thing has always been kept internally at Bad Robot. You would think this might just something Bad Robt planned to spark interest in the DVD release.
Some people are suggesting that this could have something to do with a possible Cloverfield sequel or the rumored to be JJ Abrams project codenamed ALADYGMA. But no one I know seems to know anything about that project, to the point that I'm not sure it even exists at all. I know that sequel talk was put on the backburner when the Cloverfield monster failed to have legs, but the film has done extremely well overseas. The movie opened in Japan this weekend, and while numbers are not yet available, I'm sure it will be popular in the land of Godzilla. Check out this cool graph from CloverfieldClues.
The Cloverfield Monster might not have legs, but it sure has a long tail (Cloverfield hit the $80,000,000 mark in the US after making $40 million in its first weekend, it has taken another 11 weeks to double that). The film has taken in over $158 million worldwide to date.
Discuss: Do you still want to see a Cloverfield sequel?