So What's J.J. Abrams' Latest Viral Marketing Campaign About?

J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot production company has mastered the art of the viral marketing tease, and the Lost creator/Star Trek director is at it again, this time with a creepy, one minute video featuring a man/creature stumbling out of a body of water, a poetically vague voiceover, a face with lips sewn shut, and the tagline "soon he will know."

J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot production company has mastered the art of the viral marketing tease, and the Lost creator/Star Trek director is at it again, this time with a creepy, one minute video featuring a man/creature stumbling out of a body of water, a poetically vague voiceover, a face with lips sewn shut, and the tagline "soon he will know."

Bad Robot released the video, called "Stranger", to Entertainment Weekly and on Twitter this morning, but gave few clues as to what exactly it is. "We asked, but he’s not telling," Jess Cagle writes at EW. "At least not yet. Is it a new film? A TV series? A digital endeavor? Let the speculation begin!"

That speculation, now a few hours in, isn't really yielding much. As Kevin Jagernauth writes at The Playlist: "We suppose we could trawl IMDB and figure out what Bad Robot production this might be, but that would take away half the fun (okay, we did try that, but at first glance nothing popped out)." We also, admittedly, decided to scour IMDb Pro discovered that it's nearly impossible to decide which of the 25 titles Bad Robot has in development this could be. It doesn't really seem like God Particle. Could it be this mysterious project? Or this one? BuzzFeed's Adam B. Vary speculated on Twitter: "Count of Monte Cristo? Frankenstein? Robinson Crusoe's Zombie Aliens?"

Of course, Abrams' and his company have utilized these sorts of confusing and intriguing teasers to great effect, most notably in the lead-up to 2008's monster movie Cloverfield. During that campaign, "Paramount Pictures would not initially acknowledge that the project even existed, in spite of their logo appearing on the preview," according to IGN, meaning we could be in for a lot more intentional misdirection on the part of Abrams and crew. Keep your eyes peeled. And maybe your lips sewn shut.