Nostalgic for the good old days of The Goonies and Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Never fret – JJ Abrams has written a love letter to Steven Spielberg that sprinkles the ‘only kids can truly understand’ formula with a dusting of real monster magic. Old-timers will breathe a sigh of relief, new bloods will wish they lived in a time when you biked to visit your friend just next door, fabrics came in seven hot variations of ‘mustard’ and cool kids had walkie talkies not iPhones.

For some time now the JJ Abrams/Steven Spielberg super project, Super 8, has been an unidentified object hovering at the edge of film journalism. It’s drawn plenty of attention – most of it focusing on what on Earth (or perhaps not on Earth?) the film is all about. With this latest piece of casting news, could the mystery finally be unravelling? No, probably not.