10 CLOVERFIELD LANE: Mary Elizabeth Winstead Talks About The Film's Secrecy

I've been a big fan of Mary Elizabeth Winstead for years, but I was as shocked as anyone to find out that her new "trapped in a basement" movie Valencia (sometimes called The Cellar) is actually going to be released as 10 Cloverfield Lane, a surprise title change from J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot Productions. It remains to be seen exactly how the two movies will connect (is the monster from the first movie outside? Did John Goodman's character know about the New York attack before anyone else?), but you should definitely watch the trailer if you haven't already.

In a new interview, Winstead (who stars with Goodman and John Gallagher Jr.) spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the secrecy behind the new movie:

“There is this veil of secrecy to it from the very beginning. We were making this movie in this little bubble where nobody else knew what we were doing and there’s really only three actors in the whole thing, so it kind of felt like this really intimate experience. Now that it’s about to come out, it’s sort of crazy — like, ‘Oh yeah, people are excited to see this movie.’ I forgot that that was going to happen...

“It’s so much about just the actors interacting with each other and that tension that builds, just all wondering if they are who they say the are, if they’re telling the truth or not, and really wondering what’s outside."

When the film's poster was released, I speculated that maybe Valencia wasn't testing quite as well as the studio was hoping, so they did some rewrites to set this story in the Cloverfield universe in order to create more interest. It's a solid plan that seems to have worked, but Winstead claims the rewrites weren't very significant:

“We always have the script. We know where it’s all leading to. As production went on there were rewrites, as there usually are, but nothing that was major. It was always something that I knew we weren’t going to be able to talk about until people saw the movie.”

Hmmm. I don't know if I believe her, because as you all know, Bad Robot has a bit of a reputation when it comes to secrecy. I'm not sure we'll know the full story on this until years from now, because I'm guessing whatever is said at the press junket might not be the whole truth. We'll find out very soon. Meanwhile, /Film has a good breakdown of the viral marketing campaign that's slowly ramping up by activating a dormant site that was promoting the first film.

The film is directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who rose to prominence when his short film Portal: No Escape went viral a few years ago. 10 Cloverfield Lane opens in theaters on March 11th, 2016.