Catalogue classic: Cloverfield → Ultra HD Blu-ray, Paramount

Anton Van Beek powers up his camcorder and sets out to document the truth about the 2008 monster-sized box office smash

- Anton Van Beek

THE SUMMER OF 2007 saw the much-hyped arrival of the first of Michael Bay's live-action Transformers movies. While that film would go on to score over $700m at the box office, for many who went to see it at the cinema the real talking point was the mysterious trailer that played in front.

The two-minute teaser kicked off with home movie footage of people at a party in New York City, interrupted when the building is jolted by what seems to be an earthquake. The revellers head to the roof and witness a massive explosion in the distance, before rushing downstairs and out onto the streets where they're greeted by the torn-up head of the Statue of Liberty flying through the air and crashing down. And that was it. There wasn't even a title. Just a release date and a handful of production credits, the most prominent of which read 'From producer J.J. Abrams'.

'What the hell was that?'

Although he'd written scripts for a handful of films, including Regarding Henry (1991) and Forever Young (1992), Abrams really found his feet on television, creating cult hits Felicity (1998-2002) and Alias (2001-2006). Another smallscreen creation, the sci-fi-mystery phenomenon Lost (2004-2010), then transformed Abrams into a hot property.

Soon he'd been picked by Tom Cruise to direct Mission: Impossible III (2006) and signed on to helm Paramount's cinematic Star Trek reboot (2009). Unlike those CLO SEY projects, though, nothing was known about this mysterious new Abrams' production. In part this was because the teaser itself was essentially a proof-of-concept piece for the film. Although the footage would end up being used in the movie, it was shot specifically during pre-production to serve as both a promo and a VFX test-bed.