Surprise! Everything We Know About J.J. Abram's '10 Cloverfield Lane'

True to form, J.J. Abrams surprised audiences this week with a surprise trailer for a film no one saw coming: 10 Cloverfield Lane. The film is being touted as the "blood relative" of 2008's found monster footage film Cloverfield.

Audiences of the film 13 Hours were surprised by the sneaky new trailer Thursday evening and early Friday in much the same way the original Cloverfield trailer surprised audiences. The trailer for Cloverfield premiered in front of Transformers with no title, and very little information to boot. A very successful viral campaign for the film followed.

So how did Abrams (who produced both films) keep this project secret, too? In order to keep sneaky fans at bay, 10 Cloverfield Lane went by two other names during production: Valencia and The Cellar. The cast and crew have remained relatively mum about the project from the start, with star Mary Elizabeth Winstead having provided this simple description to Variety back in 2014:

"The majority of the movie takes place in an underground cellar, and revolves around a young woman who wakes up in the cellar after a severe car accident and fears she has been abducted. Her captor, a doomsday prepper, tells her he saved her life and that there has been a terrible chemical attack that has left the outside uninhabitable. She does not know what to believe and as tensions rise, she decides she must escape, regardless of the terrors that await outside."

The eerie trailer, which can be viewed below, backs up Winstead's description to a tee, but in true Abrams fashion doesn't reveal much else. Unlike the Cloverfield trailer frenzy, though, the trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane comes just shy of two months before the film's release. This is another daring move by Abrams, who is known for going against the grain and causing theory mania with his top-secret marketing campaigns.

He told Collider of the decision, "The idea came up a long time ago during production. We wanted to make it a blood relative of Cloverfield. The idea was developed over time. We wanted to hold back the title for as long as possible."

Abrams' quote suggests the film is not a true sequel, and the tie-ins to the Cloverfield story remain to be seen.

The film also stars John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr. The script is written by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken with help from Damien Chazelle, the mastermind behind Whiplash. Dan Trachtenberg directed the film, which will be released March 11 of this year.