Easily one of the highlights of this year's San Diego Comic Con was JJ Abrams, who arrived bearing little new information, but plenty of enthusiasm.
Abrams, you see, is working on two of the most hotly anticipated projects for next year - the mysterious, much-hyped monster epic Cloverfield/1-18-08 (as it is currently working titled) and a little project called Star Trek.
Speaking to a packed house at the Con's massive Hall H, Abrams first tackled Cloverfield, poo-pooing the recent rumours (that it would be called Monstrous). While he didn't confirm a title or show anything but the teaser poster that's been online for a while, he did talk about his reasons for the film's existence. "I went to Japan a year ago with my son, and in the toy stores, there were still all these Godzillas. And I thought, 'we need our own monster. Not like King Kong, although I love King Kong, he's adorable. And not like Godzilla either. He's a charming monster, but I wanted something that was insane, and intense. So we started making this movie for you, the fans and we're almost done. I'm so excited. You're going to get the real trailer, the real title and some footage. I can't wait for January!" Us neither.
He returned later to introduce the first person cast in Star Trek - Heroes' Zachary Quinto, as Spock, alongside original Spock Leonard Nimoy who is also playing the role in the movie - as an older man (well, half Vulcan). "We go into production in November," Abrams told the crowd, "and this is a series I loved as a kid. While I was always more of a Star Wars kid, I loved Star Trek. The excitement for us is to take this remarkable world that Gene Roddenberry created and these incredible characters and show them a way that you haven't seen them. It's tricky because this matters so much to so many people, so we can't screw this up. It's a tightrope but we couldn't be more proud."
