TOP 10 RUMOURS AROUND J.J. ABRAMS' STRANGER
UPDATE (12/09/13): The book?! Really?!! Ok then.
So J.J. Abrams recently released a trailer for an unknown project and everyone since has been geeking out and coming up with their own guesses as to what tat project might be. Some of them making more sense than others.
Here are my favourite guesses that I've heard so far: 10 being the more probable/boring guess and 1 being the more outlandish/exciting guess.
Here we go:
Nothing can stop J.J. from dipping his toe in the TV world, it seems. The man is always looking to find the next Alias, the next Lost or the next Fringe. And you gotta love him for that. Almost Human is, of course, the next big thing he's making that's coming out (yes, that robot Karl Urban thing) but he's also been working with Alfonso Cuaron on a grittier sci-fi show with some clear potential. Believe would follow a little girl with psychic abilities and a dude who's trying to protect her from some shady organisation. The 'dude' in question certainly has the right haircut to be the mysterious fellow from Stranger, plus 'Stitchface McGee' could potentially be the leader of said shadowy organisation. The super-stylish look of Stranger is in direct contrast to the shaky-cam realistic style Believe is going for, though.
Last year, J.J. Abrams acquired the script to Wunderkind, a 70's-set thriller in which a CIA agent and an agent of the Israeli Mossad are hunting down some nazi. Not much more than that is known about the project and IMDb is weirdly blank when it comes to it so it's a possibility that Stranger would act as some kind of prequel short to the movie showing the nazi in question (Stitchface) hunting down a Jewish prisoner. We would then cut to the movie itself where the roles would have been justly reversed. Just saying: it's certainly quite plausible.
This was my top guess for a while. J.J. Abrams apparently is working on a book called "S.", which could stand for Stranger. The novel is certainly going for a mysterious, experimental vibe and the font of the whole "Soon He Will Know" thing is similar to the font used in a promo for the book (see above). It all kinda seems to fit. That said, would Abrams really send this trailer to film websites and build THIS much hype over a non-film project? Is he already planning a film adaptation of S.? This might be the most legitimate guess but also the most confusing one...
Now we're getting into the least likely stuff. The name Frankenstein's been thrown around a lot but there's literally no basis to that. However, Bad Robot are producing a mini series based on the last of Rod Sterling's screenplays called The Stops Along The Way. Sterling is best known for creating The Twilight Zone so Stranger's black-and-white tones, its weird, twist-like ending and the overall fable-sounding vibe does evoke some Twilight Zone iconography. That said, it's probably too early for there to already be a trailer for the project. Even its premise hasn't been announced! Then again, who knows? That might be the whole point of that trailer.
That one makes me laugh. Ok, Bad Robot are indeed working on Cloverfield 2 and the trailer for the first Cloverfield was pretty ominous. But come on, Cloverfield was a shaky-cam Godzilla B-movie not some stylish, moody flick about a dude on the beach and another dude with stitched lips and a torchlight! Unless our "stranger" is being pursued by Gigan, I don't see that having any link to the next Cloverfield movie at all.
Somehow, the reboot for The Crow got brought up a lot seeing as the trailer showed a dude with long hair being somewhat reborn but... yeah there's no way Stranger is at all related to The Crow. For one thing, last I heard Bad Robot aren't working on that project but also it's unlikely that a Crow reboot would look anything like this. If anything, it'll be big, loud, slick, overproduced and very CGI. It'll be a typical studio movie which'll go through the same exact process as any other reboot. It could still be decent but J.J.'s not involved. Same goes for the Deadpool movie, which people brought up as well. I blame X-Men Origins: Wolverine for that one...
Of course some people brought up Star Trek. Many actually thought that Stranger's narrator was Leonard Nimoy but it really isn't. Besides, even if it was, this would make more sense as a William Bell Fringe spin-off prequel thing than a Star Trek movie. You could go all out and make all sorts of suppositions just like with Benedict Cumberbatch's character in Star Trek Into Darkness before that film's release but it's faaaaaar too early for Bad Robot to even think about the new Star Trek movie, let alone bring out weird trailers for it! And no, Stitchface isn't a Borg-ed Jean-Luc Picard. That's silly.
Bad Robot, believe it or not, are set to produce not only a Half Life movie but a Portal movie. Basically, these days, if it's sci-fi, J.J. Abrams owns it and is making it. The only link to Half Life I could possibly find in Stranger is the fact that our beach fellow doesn't say anything and that Stitchface could potentially be a twisted version of The G-Man. It's pretty far-fetched, though, I must say. I would love it to be the first Half Life trailer but in order to peak interest they'll probably go for something closer to the game but obscure enough that fans will go nuts straight away. Besides, again, it's way too early for a Half Life trailer.
Not gonna lie: I like that one. It's absurd but I like it. There were always going to be people shouting out Star Wars, whatever the mysterious trailer was about. It could have been about a chimp playing backgammon with Mickey Rourke and people would have still mentioned Star Wars. The main thing I heard was that the music throughout the trailer is basically Yoda's Theme. It's not. There's a similarity to some of the keys but it's really not. The other thing I heard was that Stitchface was in fact a rebooted version of Darth Maul which would be really, REALLY odd. Why bring back characters from The Phantom Menace when the new Star Wars movie is meant to take place SIX movies after that! Plus he died at the end of that movie. Sorry Star Wars fans but Stranger's not your first trailer. The actual first trailer for the new Star Wars will be way better and you'll know straight away what it is, I swear. And don't give me the whole "but the first two letters of Stranger are the first two letters of Star Wars" thing. That's insane.
This is the one I really want to believe. Deep inside I know it's a long shot but I really want to believe it. A Lost spin-off movie or mini-series? With Desmond as the lead? I'd be up for that! Sayid was also mentioned but, come on. Who wants a Sayid spin-off?! Even I wouldn't be all that impressed by that. The trailer mentions the word "lost", takes place on a beach, shows a guy with ropes around his wrists (Season 3, anyone?) and some weird guy hunting him down (an Other?). It's kinda out there but it's nowhere near as far-fetched as The Crow or Half Life! Which fuels my sad, pathetic wishes for a Lost spin-off even more. Sadly, Lost being the constant mystery that it was, it'll always get brought up whatever random trailer J.J. Abrams comes up with. Hell, you might as well say that Stranger will be an Alias spin-off with Arvin Sloane somehow waking up far into the future and being hunted down by a stitched-up Michael Vaughn...
Abrams knows he's working on too many things and has worked on so many projects shrouded in mystery that he can just put out a strange trailer and the internet will implode. Hence this list. I, for one, look forward to whatever the man has in store, whether it's a novel, a series or a film. Whether it's Lost, a nazi-hunting flick or Felicity 2. Whatever it is, it'll be interesting and even if it is a major disappointment and the trailer completely overhyped it, it was fun trying to figure it out.
So J.J. Abrams recently released a trailer for an unknown project and everyone since has been geeking out and coming up with their own guesses as to what tat project might be. Some of them making more sense than others.
Here are my favourite guesses that I've heard so far: 10 being the more probable/boring guess and 1 being the more outlandish/exciting guess.
Here we go:
10
BELIEVE
9
WUNDERKIND
Last year, J.J. Abrams acquired the script to Wunderkind, a 70's-set thriller in which a CIA agent and an agent of the Israeli Mossad are hunting down some nazi. Not much more than that is known about the project and IMDb is weirdly blank when it comes to it so it's a possibility that Stranger would act as some kind of prequel short to the movie showing the nazi in question (Stitchface) hunting down a Jewish prisoner. We would then cut to the movie itself where the roles would have been justly reversed. Just saying: it's certainly quite plausible.
8
S.
7
TWILIGHT ZONE
Now we're getting into the least likely stuff. The name Frankenstein's been thrown around a lot but there's literally no basis to that. However, Bad Robot are producing a mini series based on the last of Rod Sterling's screenplays called The Stops Along The Way. Sterling is best known for creating The Twilight Zone so Stranger's black-and-white tones, its weird, twist-like ending and the overall fable-sounding vibe does evoke some Twilight Zone iconography. That said, it's probably too early for there to already be a trailer for the project. Even its premise hasn't been announced! Then again, who knows? That might be the whole point of that trailer.
6
CLOVERFIELD 2
That one makes me laugh. Ok, Bad Robot are indeed working on Cloverfield 2 and the trailer for the first Cloverfield was pretty ominous. But come on, Cloverfield was a shaky-cam Godzilla B-movie not some stylish, moody flick about a dude on the beach and another dude with stitched lips and a torchlight! Unless our "stranger" is being pursued by Gigan, I don't see that having any link to the next Cloverfield movie at all.
5
THE CROW
Somehow, the reboot for The Crow got brought up a lot seeing as the trailer showed a dude with long hair being somewhat reborn but... yeah there's no way Stranger is at all related to The Crow. For one thing, last I heard Bad Robot aren't working on that project but also it's unlikely that a Crow reboot would look anything like this. If anything, it'll be big, loud, slick, overproduced and very CGI. It'll be a typical studio movie which'll go through the same exact process as any other reboot. It could still be decent but J.J.'s not involved. Same goes for the Deadpool movie, which people brought up as well. I blame X-Men Origins: Wolverine for that one...
4
STAR TREK 3
Of course some people brought up Star Trek. Many actually thought that Stranger's narrator was Leonard Nimoy but it really isn't. Besides, even if it was, this would make more sense as a William Bell Fringe spin-off prequel thing than a Star Trek movie. You could go all out and make all sorts of suppositions just like with Benedict Cumberbatch's character in Star Trek Into Darkness before that film's release but it's faaaaaar too early for Bad Robot to even think about the new Star Trek movie, let alone bring out weird trailers for it! And no, Stitchface isn't a Borg-ed Jean-Luc Picard. That's silly.
3
HALF LIFE
Bad Robot, believe it or not, are set to produce not only a Half Life movie but a Portal movie. Basically, these days, if it's sci-fi, J.J. Abrams owns it and is making it. The only link to Half Life I could possibly find in Stranger is the fact that our beach fellow doesn't say anything and that Stitchface could potentially be a twisted version of The G-Man. It's pretty far-fetched, though, I must say. I would love it to be the first Half Life trailer but in order to peak interest they'll probably go for something closer to the game but obscure enough that fans will go nuts straight away. Besides, again, it's way too early for a Half Life trailer.
2
STAR WARS: EPISODE VII
1
LOST
This is the one I really want to believe. Deep inside I know it's a long shot but I really want to believe it. A Lost spin-off movie or mini-series? With Desmond as the lead? I'd be up for that! Sayid was also mentioned but, come on. Who wants a Sayid spin-off?! Even I wouldn't be all that impressed by that. The trailer mentions the word "lost", takes place on a beach, shows a guy with ropes around his wrists (Season 3, anyone?) and some weird guy hunting him down (an Other?). It's kinda out there but it's nowhere near as far-fetched as The Crow or Half Life! Which fuels my sad, pathetic wishes for a Lost spin-off even more. Sadly, Lost being the constant mystery that it was, it'll always get brought up whatever random trailer J.J. Abrams comes up with. Hell, you might as well say that Stranger will be an Alias spin-off with Arvin Sloane somehow waking up far into the future and being hunted down by a stitched-up Michael Vaughn...
Abrams knows he's working on too many things and has worked on so many projects shrouded in mystery that he can just put out a strange trailer and the internet will implode. Hence this list. I, for one, look forward to whatever the man has in store, whether it's a novel, a series or a film. Whether it's Lost, a nazi-hunting flick or Felicity 2. Whatever it is, it'll be interesting and even if it is a major disappointment and the trailer completely overhyped it, it was fun trying to figure it out.
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