Click to play videoNew Delhi: What is 1-18-08? Why is it one of the most searched dates on the Internet? And why is the Statue of Liberty headless?
Filmmaker JJ Abrams, the man who brought us the highly addictive, sometimes scary and always entertaining series Lost, started work on a top secret project around a year ago, called Cloverfield.
“It was an idea that I had, to make a monster movie. The idea of taking a Godzilla kind of movie and make a YouTube kind of a video got me really excited,” says Abrams.
Now in a world where film news is leaked out months before a project is even approved, Abrams pulled off the near impossible.
With the help of Paramount studios, he conducted a viral marketing project that left all fans and critics breathless and begging for more.
A ferocious online campaign was conducted and Cloverfield became one of the most talked about and anticipated films for 2008 - without much information about the plot revealed.
The official web-page of the film called 1-18-08.com only had various images that increased the suspense and what initially seemed like a slick marketing gimmick, has now become a fever that is generating a buzz like never before.
From fansites, to blogs, to live journals, everyone’s talking about Cloverfield, a film with a cast that does not boast of a single known face.
Speculation over 'how' the monster in the film will look has led to various fans creating pictures of the Cloverfield monster.
What keeps the mystery going are the few trailers of the film available on the Internet.
They show footage shot from camcorders, the film is completely shot in news coverage style, with shaky hand held footage.
So what is 1-18-08?
That is the release date for Cloverfield, produced by Abrams and directed by Matt Reeves.
So here is hoping that with a marketing campaign like this, the film does not disappoint.
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