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JJ Abrams’ Super 8 gets a release date

Well the super mysterious Super 8 has a release date: June 10th, 2011.

There are only questions surrounding JJ Abrams’ new film, and /Film has kindly rounded up all of the small bits of information that we know for sure, which I have included below.

1.   Kyle Chandler and Elle Fanning lead the cast along with Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich, Gabriel Basso, Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, AJ Michalka and Zach Mills.

2. It is not a Cloverfield sequel or prequel.

3. It will not be shot or distributed in 3D.

4. It is written and directed by JJ Abrams.

5. It is being produced by Steven Spielberg, along with Bryan Burk and Abrams

6 It will be released in 2011 as an Amblin Entertainment (not Dreamworks) release (Paramount Pictures Distributing, Bad Robot Producing)

7. This will be an homage/tribute to Spielberg’s 1970′s/1980′s Amblin films, like Close Encounters of a Third Kind and E.T. Imagine combining that with the characters, mystery and supernatural spin of Abrams.

8. And it takes place in the late 1979.

9. The trailer was shot independently of the film a month ago, and the special effects were done under the cover of Abrams new NBC series Undercovers

10. The film’s actual budget is in the range of $45 million-$50 million.

11 It will be shot traditionally, and not through a handheld Super 8 Camera ala Cloverfield.

12. The movie has something to do with “the possibility that a group of kids in 1979 are playing around making movies with their Super 8 cameras (as Abrams and Spielberg did as kids) and accidentally capture something … sinister, on film.” This certainly gels with Vulture’s original theory on the trailer.

13. Paramount put out an open casting call looking to cast unknowns for the lead roles.

14. JJ commented about working on the film with Speilberg at Comic-Con “It’s unbelievable.  It really is surreal.  I mean because there is a genre element to the movie, it’s impossible to work with him and not constantly reference the work he has done, and you don’t want to sound like you are being a sicko fan.  But it’s been incredible, and he’s been beyond helpful.  And the movie is, I think, very much in the spirit of some of the Amblin films that he made years ago.  So it is a dream come true.  And I couldn’t imagine working on something that is more sort of personal and also hyper real.  It’s not like the movie is some kind of autobiography, but there is a lot of stuff in it that feels very personal.”

15. Frequent Abrams collaborators are also involved: Neville Page (Star Trek, Cloverfield, Avatar) is designing the alien creature, and Michael Giacchino (Star Trek, Lost, Up) is composing the score.

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