Home Entertainment Epic viral campaign and new trailer for 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE

Epic viral campaign and new trailer for 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE

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We have gone from not knowing 10 Cloverfield Lane existed to being graced with two excellent trailers and some backing story (which be viewed both here and here) that have been exceptional. And now we are being treated to an excellent viral campaign for the movie to get those pulses further raising for it.

Abrams has recently confirmed that this film is definitely a blood relative to the first Cloverfield film, so we can expect some continuity between the two and the below details on the viral campaign seem to only confirm that. This viral campaign is connecting directly with the augmented reality game used by Matt Reeves’ first Cloverfield film and if you aren’t familiar with that campaign – we’ve detailed what it was all about below:

We learned that Rob was leaving the U.S. to go work for a Japanese company producing a popular frozen drink called Slusho. The drink was produced by a Japanese drilling company named Tagruato (who has since appeared as an Easter egg in other J.J. Abrams films like Star Trek). The drink’s main addictive ingredient is called “seabed’s nectar,” which we suspected Tagruato was drilling from something at the bottom of the ocean. An environmental group called “TIDO Wave” was trying to stop Tagruato from drilling just as they opened the Chaui Station, somewhere close to New York City. A Tagruato whistleblower spy confirmed there was no oil on Chaui Station and that they were keeping a dark secret there. Days later the station was destroyed. Tagruato claimed that a terrorist group TIDO Wave were responsible, but were obviously trying to cover up what really happened. Had they awoken a monster?

This story was never presented in the final movie, but did help to establish the scene better for those who participated in it and made for a much better experience when viewing the movie. This new campaign offers something very similar. Now what follows may be spoilers, but is more likely just additional backstory that will set the scene for the movie:

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A new “Employee of the Month” page has popped up on the Tagruato website, updated for February 2016. The employee of the month for Bold Futura is Howard Stambler, i.e. John Goodman‘s character from 10 Cloverfield Lane. One of the subsidiary companies of the Tagruato Corporation introduced during the 2007 viral/ARG was a company named Bold Futura which was working on the “design, manufacture and integration of advanced technology products for the military, arms manufacturers and space exploration organizations.” Here is what the website profile tells us about Howard:

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Howard Stambler –
Telemetry Analyst
Howard will celebrate his seven-year anniversary with Bold Futura in the fall. This month, Howard’s drive, commitment and refusal to accept easy answers resulted in a significant breakthrough diagnosing transmission complications with two of our governmental clients’ orbiting satellites.

The current and past months’ pages also feature photos and bios of Dr. Feng Guangbiao and Vanessa Gwon, who were the authors of the recent Tagruato e-mails. Stambler is wearing a t-shirt that says “Radioman ’70”, and DinosaurDracula on Reddit has discovered a website at radioman70.com.

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RadioMan70.com redirects to FunAndPrettyThings.com. CloverfieldClues has noticed the following about the website:

  • The photo with the letters is missing the following letters; M E G A N
  • If you try to “cheat” by viewing the source code for the page, there is a warning message: “You do not belong here. Megan would never come here. I know who you are and will be tracking you.”
  • One of the photos is the Eiffel Tower, and there were a lot of Eiffel towers in the 10 Cloverfield Lane

But the most interesting is the photo of a girl sitting in front of a computer. The image is from the John Hughes movie Pretty in Pink. If you click on the image, a pops-up asks for a passphrase. Reddit user Briarr Rose discovered the solution was the line from Pretty in Pink, “Do you want to talk?”

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Entering the line of dialogue from the movie sends you to a secret message board where Radioman70 has posted a message to his daughter Megan warning her about an impending danger. Here is the message in full:

DEAR MEGAN,

I HOPE THAT YOU CAN SEE THIS NOW. I’VE BEEN TRYING TO EMAIL YOU AND CALL YOU, BUT YOU HAVEN’T ANSWERED. IT’S OK, I FIGURED OUT WHY – YOUR MOTHER IS BLOCKING MY EMAIL, AND SHE MADE YOU CHANGE YOUR NUMBER. I FORGIVE YOU, IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.

I’M SORRY ABOUT HAVING TO DECEIVE YOU WITH THIS SITE, BUT I NEEDED TO FIND A WAY AROUND YOUR MOTHER’S INTERFERENCE, AND WERE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. NOW WE CAN TALK IN CONFIDENCE WITHOUT HER FINDING OUT. IT’LL BE OUR LITTLE SECRET.

I NEVER WANTED YOU TO HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT SOME OF THE THINGS THAT I KNOW BUT IT’S A FATHER’S JOB TO PROTECT HIS DAUGHTER, AND I NEED TO PROTECT YOU NOW. YOUR MOTHER NEVER LISTENED TO ME. THERE WERE THINGS I SAW, IN THE NAVY, THINGS THE SOVIET’S WERE INVOLVED WITH. SHE DIDN’T BELIEVE ME. BUT SHE WILL. EVERYBODY WILL.

DO YOU REMEMBER HOW EVERYBODY THOUGHT THE WHOLE WORLD WAS GOING TO END WHEN IT TURNED 2000, AND I BUILT US THAT LITTLE BOMB SHELTER OUT BACK? I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WAS THINKING – THAT TINY PLACE WOULD HAVE LASTED US ABOUT A WEEK, ESPECIALLY WITH HOW MUCH YOUR MOTHER COMPLAINED ABOUT IT, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I TRIED TO MAKE HER HAPPY.

SO THIS TIME, I DID IT RIGHT FROM THE START. IT’S HUGE, SO MUCH BIGGER THAN WHAT YOU PROBABLY REMEMBER! BUT COZY! AND I FILLED IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU LIKE! WE’LL BE SAFE DOWN THERE, HOPEFULLY FOR YEARS IF WE NEED TO. BUT I NEED YOU TO COME TO ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. THEY MAY ATTACK ANY DAY NOW, SO THERE’S NO TIME TO WASTE.

I UNDERSTAND IT MAY BE HARD FOR YOU TO GET TO ME, OR THAT THERE MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH TIME. SO I HAD ANOTHER SAFE PLACE BUILT – JUST FOR YOU. IT’S NOT QUITE AS BIG OR NICE AS THE ONE HERE, BUT IT WILL KEEP YOU SAFE. IT’S BEEN EXPENSIVE TO BUILD, ESPECIALLY SINCE I CAN’T BE THERE WATCHING OVER THE PEOPLE I HIRED AND MAKE SURE THEY DO IT RIGHT. BUT I’M PAYING THEM ENOUGH THAT THEY BETTER. BUT NO PRICE IS TOO HIGH FOR YOU. AND IT’S NOT LIKE MONEY’S GONNA BE GOOD FOR MUCH LONGER. IT’S RIGHT NEAR YOU IN CHICAGO – DO YOU REMEMEBER YOUR GRANDMA’S OLD HOUSE NEAR THE HIGHWAY? IT’S IN THE EMPTY LOT RIGHT BEHIND THERE. IT’LL BE FINISHED ANY DAY NOW. AS SOON AS IT IS, I NEED YOU TO GET INTO IT AND LOCK THE DOORS BEHIND YOU.

EVEN IF YOUR MOTHER IS WATCHING CLOSELY AND YOU CAN’T REPLY, KEEP CHECKING THIS SITE AND I WILL HELP YOU PREPARE AS MUCH AS I CAN.

I LOVE YOU, RADIOGIRL. I JUST WANT YOU TO BE SAFE.

LOVE,

DAD

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This message is followed by a further chat dialogue. If you type a reply in the chat, another window pops up asking if you are Megan. If you say yes, you are asked: “What was the secret gift I gave you on your 13th birthday?” No one has figured out the solution to this one. But this gives us some interesting backstory:

Howard Stambler’s daughter Megan isn’t allowed to talk to her father, and her mother has blocked his e-mails. So he created this site as a way to communicate to her and tell her that he has build, not one but two bunkers. A big one near his home, and a smaller one in Chicago, closer to where she must live. The bunkers are because “THEY MAY ATTACK ANY DAY NOW, SO THERE’S NO TIME TO WASTE.” Who they are, we don’t know.

This is all quite a lot of fun and we are thankful to all those involved for doing most of the homework for us, especially /Film ,so that we didn’t have to – because we’re lazy that way. If anyone here figures out the answer to that final question, we will hopefully be able to find out more and let everyone know further.

It’s worth noting that Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character in the film is listed as Michelle, not Megan. Hopefully we will get to see what happens further with Megan further in the film, but there is a big chance none of this will be explored in the film and is just to add more context to the character of Howard.

And if that’s not all – we’ve been graced further with a new trailer for the film as well:

This trailer seems to indicate that there may be something sinister going on with Howard (John Goodman’s character), as the way Winstead’s character awakens is quite creepy and it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Written by Whiplash filmmaker Damien Chazelle and Josh Campbell & Matthew Stuecken and is directed by Dan Trachtenberg. 10 Cloverfield Lane opens in theaters on April 8th in South Africa.

This is an epic build up and marketing campaign for the film. Are you not even more excited for 10 Cloverfield Lane now?

Last Updated: February 17, 2016

One Comment

  1. Axon1988

    February 19, 2016 at 15:54

    Holy carpfish that’s crazy. I like this a lot.

    Reply

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