If you’re a fan of Bad Robot and live in Los Angeles area, it’s time to head over to the new Gallery1988 location at 7308 Melrose.  That’s because the gallery has teamed up with some great artists to create a new gallery show focused on the TV shows and movies produced by Bad Robot, like Fringe, Lost, Super 8, Person of Interest, Alias, Cloverfield, and Star Trek.  The show opens tonight and runs until May 18th, so you’ve got plenty of time to check it out.  However, since many of the items are very limited or original pieces of art, you probably want to head over soon if you want to buy anything.

Last night the gallery held a private reception for Bad Robot and I was able to stop by and take about 100 pictures of everything on display.  Hit the jump to see the pictures.

This week on The Collision, we talk about the recent news regarding J.J. Abrams directing Star Wars, his previous work, the timetable for Episode VII, how the upcoming Star Wars properties with intersect, and more.  As always, we finish up with our recommendations.

Click here to listen to the new episode of The Collision, click here for the previous episode (“The 2013 Sundance Film Festival”), click here to add the podcast to your RSS, and click here to find us on iTunes. To keep up to date with The Collision, you can follow us on Twitter at @MattGoldberg, @AdamChitwood, and @DrClawMD (Dave Trumbore). Hit the jump to check out the trailers for this week’s recommendations.

As I’ve said again and again,  Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon‘s The Cabin in the Woods is one of the best “horror” movies I’ve ever seen, and it’s easily one of my favorite films this year.  While many of you might love the horror genre, I find it repetitive and stale.  It seems like the genre is stuck in neutral, and no one is making any progress forward.  But that all changed after I saw Cabin in the Woods.  Without spoiling anything, let’s just say the film turns “horror” on its head, and I loved every second of it.  For more on the film, here’s Matt’s glowing review and interviews with Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as well as Anna Hutchison, Jesse Williams & Kristen Connolly.

Right before this year’s SXSW, I sat down with co-writer and director Drew Goddard for an extended video interview. Since we both didn’t want to spoil any of the twists and turns of the movie, our conversation is spoiler free.  During the wide ranging conversation we talked about making The Cabin in the Woods, the status of the Cloverfield sequel, Alias, Buffy, Angel, Lost, (he was a writer on all four series) Steven Spielberg‘s Robopocalypse (which he’s writing), his reaction to seeing The Avengers, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to watch.

Talk of a Cloverfield sequel has been around for quite some time now. Fans were eager to see more of the found footage monster pic after its 2008 release, and producer J.J. Abrams, director Matt Reeves, and screenwriter Drew Goddard have been plagued with Cloverfield sequel questions for the past three and a half years. All involved stressed that it was more important to have a story worth telling than to rush straight into production on a follow-up, and major movement on the sequel has yet to happen.

Steve sat down with Goddard earlier today to talk about his upcoming directorial debut The Cabin in the Woods (co-written by Joss Whedon), and the scribe gave an update on the status of the sequel and why it hasn’t come to fruition sooner. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

It didn’t claim the record for highest debut or the greatest attendance, but this year’s Super Bowl weekend still caught most box office watchers by surprise with two bigger-than-expected openings. Fox’s Chronicle was first with $22 million from 2,907 locations, but CBS Films’ The Woman in Black was right on its heels with $21 million from 2,855. That’s the first time that two titles have opened to over $20 million on a Super Bowl frame since… ever.

While on the red carpet for the 37^th annual Saturn Awards, we got the chance to speak with Cloverfield and Let Me In director Matt Reeves. He gave a wide-ranging interview, talking at length about Let Me In (including his comments on the ending of the film), giving updates on his upcoming projects The Passage, This Dark Endeavor and a new script he’s currently writing, discussing the similarities between the creatures in Cloverfield and J.J. Abrams’ Super 8, and much, much more.

Hit the jump to watch the interview. If you missed our other coverage from the Saturn Awards, be sure to check out our conversations with makeup artists Rick Baker and Dave Elsey, Brandon Routh, Fringe’s Lance Reddick, producer Dean Devlin, Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd for The Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan.

After months of buildup, Super 8 took top honors this weekend with an estimated $37 million from 3,379 locations.  That figure is significantly higher than the film had been tracking just five days ago.  Is it higher than the studio was hoping for five months ago?  Not exactly.

After pulling ahead of the pack on the traffic jam that was this Friday’s box office, Relativity’s Limitless stayed on top with an estimated $19 million from its 2,756 locations.  Fellow newcomers Paul and The Lincoln Lawyer had more modest starts, making this one more in 2011’s long line of down weekends.

At this year’s Comic-Con, I was able to sit down with writer-director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) for Let Me In.  Based on the best-selling Swedish novel Lat den Ratte Komma In (Let the Right One In) by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and the highly-acclaimed film of the same name by Tomas Alfredson, Reeves film has been the subject of a lot of online bashing since before filming began.  However, over the past few weeks, as footage and images have been released, you can see the tide turning online, with many now excited to see Reeves take on the material.  Also, it didn’t hurt that the panel for Let Me In at Comic-Con was loaded with some great footage.

Anyway, before the panel, I managed to get some time with Reeves.  We talked about the online buzz for his movie and how things have been changing, how much of the original movie is in his version, has he already deleted sequences for the DVD/Blu-ray, what has the test screening process been like, how did he get Michael Giacchino to do the score, what is it like for him to be at Comic-Con and what does he collect/geek out over, and a lot more.  If you’re interested Let Me In and why Reeves wanted to do a remake, you’ll love the interview.

Finally, for all you Cloverfield fans, I asked if there’s been any movement on a sequel/prequel (the answer is no), and Reeves mentioned he’d still like to get back to The Invisible Woman someday.  It’s all after the jump:

Earlier this week we learned that Iron Man 2 has a top secret trailer for a film called Super 8, a J.J. Abrams (Star Trek) project.  Then details leaked that the trailer featured an alien and was set in the 1970s; it was rumored to be a Cloverfield prequel, but that was debunked by Abrams yesterday.

A very enlightening rundown of each shot of the mysterious trailer has hit the net. Since some of you might not want to know what the trailer shows or what the film is about, everything is after the jump.  Saying that, it sounds like everyone will be talking about this project after the trailer starts to show tonight with Iron Man 2.

Leave it to J.J. Abrams to try and use secrecy about a trailer to steal some of Iron Man 2‘s thunder this weekend.  Attached to IM2 will be the first look at Abrams’ next super-secret film, Super 8.  Super 8 is being compared to Cloverfield due to the extent of the secrecy and attempt to garner interest via viral marketing.  On Tuesday, we reported that Super 8 “was absolutely connected to Cloverfield“, most likely as a prequel.  Today, Abrams categorically denied that rumor, telling Vulture, “You have to check [out the trailer, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with Cloverfield, despite your expert reporting.”

I suspect we’ll know what’s in the Super 8 trailer before Iron Man 2 debuts at midnight tomorrow.  And hey, at least we know the title of the film, which is more than we could say about Cloverfield when the teaser debuted with Transformers back in 2007.  Just remember: after you see the Super 8 trailer, there’s this whole major motion picture afterwards.  It has superheroes and it’s pretty good.  You’ll probably enjoy it.

Things are rather busy at Bad Robot, the home of Star Trek director J.J. Abrams, as of late.  In news that’s not shrouded in secrecy, the Abrams-produced spy series Undercovers earned an early pickup from NBC.  But mum’s the word for the other two items, which describe a possible collaboration with Steven Spielberg and a double secret trailer attached to Iron Man 2 that’s going by the name Super 8.

It didn’t seem the latter two projects were related, but we also had no real clue as to the contents of the trailer.  Vulture did some sleuthing, and may be able to shed light on what we’ll see in the trailer.  We’ll save the spoilerly details for after the jump, so only click “Continue Reading” if you’re sure you want to ruin the surprise.

In a world where spoilers for Hollywood blockbusters pop up online weeks before the film hits theaters, there is one man who regularly surprises the crap out of us: J.J. Abrams.  And it looks like he might be doing it again as a report has hit the net that prints of Iron Man 2 this weekend will have a surprise trailer for a film called Super 8 attached to it and that the film hasn’t even been shot yet! It might be a sequel to Cloverfield, it might not, but Abrams directed the teaser and will not be directing the film.

Would you like to know more? Then hit that jump.

Let’s say that the next project that lures J.J. Abrams (Star Trek) to the director’s chair is like a puzzle.  Vulture has a few of the pieces, and while I have no idea what picture is on the front of the box, it’s a pretty safe bet that once completed, I will be immensely satisfied.  Here’s what we have so far:

-Piece 1: The Abrams script is “a tip of the hat to [Spielberg's] movies of the 70′s and early 80′s” like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T., and Abrams wants Spielberg involved in some capacity to make sure the homage is legit.
-Piece 2: The narrative revolves around “everyday people whose personal relationships are tested when they are thrown up against extraordinarily fantastic–and possibly other-worldly–events.”
-Piece 3: The budget is low, near Cloverfield‘s modest $25 million
-Piece 3a: One source referred to it as a kind of “anti-Avatar”

After the jump, let’s try and fill in some of the blanks: I think the Spielberg thing is a corner piece, and that Avatar comparison looks kind of like a cloud . . .

Now this is just awesome.  Someone at penneydesign has imagined what modern movies and TV shows would have looked like as video games if they had been made back in the late ’70′s.   While they designed the game covers for a fake system called the CVS 2600  Cartridge Video System, it’s clear the covers are designed for the Atari 2600.  The fake games are Batman: The Dark Knight, Cloverfield, James Cameron’s Avatar, Lost, Prison Break, Snakes on a Plane, The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift and Wall-E.

What’s also great about the covers is the way they’ve added fake stickers, price tags and writing.  On The Dark Knight cover the writing says:

David & Mary Merry XMas ’78.  This is to share! Love Aunt Julie

If you ever played the Atari 2600 or just want to see some awesome fake video game covers, hit the jump.