Tag Archives: Cloverfield

Surprise! Bad Robot presents ’10 Cloverfield Lane’, a “blood relative” to 2008’s found-footage monster movie (Teaser inside)

J.J.’s done it again. Seemingly out of nowhere comes some thing; it’s a new Bad Robot-produced film titled 10 Cloverfield Lane. When I first stumbled upon this deliciously mysterious teaser trailer I thought to myself along with everybody else, “IT’S A SEQUEL TO J.J.’s MONSTER MOVIE CLOVERFIELD!” Not quite. Though the word “Cloverfield” is in the title and the teaser certainly alludes to some thing scary existing in the outside world, the Star Wars director released the following statement to Collider that attempts to clear that up:

“The idea came up a long time ago during production,” explained Abrams. “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.”

In a nutshell, writers Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken collaborated on penning a script a few years back tentatively titled The Cellar. It followed a woman who, in the aftermath of surviving a car wreck, finds herself trapped underground in a bomb shelter with a man who claims to have saved her life from a nuclear attack that destroyed the surrounding area above ground. Nuclear attack or… the Cloverfield monster! J.J. and his Bad Robot production house got involved with The Cellar when Paramount bought the script. The movie’s code name changed to Valencia to keep a lid on J.J.’s Cloverfield connection plans that apparently started to brew shortly after he signed on to executive produce it. It’s massively impressive how Paramount & Bad Robot were able to keep all of this a secret until the trailer dropped.

The teaser for 10 Cloverfield Lane (embedded after the break) first surfaced in front of Michael Bay’s Benghazi film 13 Hours, in an eerily similar fashion to the way Cloverfield‘s found-footage trailer debuted in theatres with Bay’s Transformers in 2008. It stars John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), and John Gallagher, Jr. (The Newsroom). Abrams produces with Lindsey Weber. Dan Trachtenberg, the massive talent behind the viral short film Portal: No Escape, makes his directorial debut. Despite their enthusiasm for making a direct Cloverfield sequel at some point, the original movie’s director Matt Reeves and writer Drew Goddard are not involved in this project.

I’ve been waiting for a true sequel to Cloverfield ever since I walked out of theatre in 2008 and got lost down the rabbit hole online trying to piece together clues pertaining to The Monster’s origins. Do Slusho and Tagruato ring any bells? Anyway. I find this whole “blood relative” idea to be incredibly intriguing. New survivors, new location (look at the poster pasted above; I don’t think we’re in New York City), new shooting style (it appears as though Trachtenberg is ditching Reeve’s found-footage shaky cam presentation here). The idea that 10 Cloverfield Lane is not a direct sequel to the original but rather set in the same universe as it offers the creative team a new avenue to explore the intensity of it all. If this teaser is any indication of what to expect, we are going to be getting an intimate character piece dealing with themes of trust and manipulation.

“Don’t open the door! You’re going to get all of us killed!” screams Goodman’s character as Winstead’s female protagonist unlocks the bunker’s door. What does she see? A nuclear wasteland? The Monster? Some thing entirely new? “Monsters come in many forms,” reads the poster’s tagline. The Mystery Box just arrived on your doorstep.

10 Cloverfield Lane opens March 11, 2016. Continue reading Surprise! Bad Robot presents ’10 Cloverfield Lane’, a “blood relative” to 2008’s found-footage monster movie (Teaser inside)

Cloverfield 2 is coming, intense viral marketing has begun?

J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield is a great film that emphasizes shrouded mystery, unique camera work, spectacular special effects, and an intriguing and original story with believable characters.  There is no way Abrams and crew (including producer Bryan Burk, director Matt Reeves, and writer Drew Godderd) could leave this franchise to waste after one film; especially that there is so much unused backstory material from all the viral marketing used to hype the movie way back when.

The crew on a potential sequel in the works…

Reeves: “While we were on set making the film we talked about the possibilities and directions of how a sequel can go. The fun of this movie was that it might not have been the only movie being made that night, there might be another movie! In today’s day and age of people filming their lives on their camera phones and Handycams, uploading it to YouTube… That was kind of exciting thinking about that.”

“There’s a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filming something on the side of the bridge, and Hud sees him filming and he turns over and he sees the ship that’s been capsized and sees the headless Statue of Liberty, and then he turns back and this guy’s briefly filming him. In my mind that was two movies intersecting for a brief moment, and I thought there was something interesting in the idea that this incident happened and there are so many different points of view, and there are several different movies at least happening that evening and we just saw one piece of another. That idea sort of tickled me.”

“The idea of doing something so differently is exhilarating. We hope that it created a movie experience that is different. The thing about doing a sequel is that I think we all really feel protective of that experience. The key here will be if we can find something that is compelling enough and that is different enough for us to do, then it will probably be worth doing. Obviously it also depends on how Cloverfield does worldwide and all of those things too, but really, for us creatively, we just want to find something that would be another challenge.”

Burk: “The creative team has fleshed out an entire backstory which, if we’re lucky, we might get to explore in future films.”

Abrams: “It would be a totally different kind of thing but it’s too early to talk about.”

As you can clearly see, there areideas floating around about what a sequel to Cloverfield can entail.  Focusing on the backstory of the monster and changing up the style of the way the movie is portrayed to audiences seems to be the two big concepts to take away from the sequel jabber.  Also, let me remind you that Cloverfield did leave some questions at the end of the film in two instances.  (1) In the final scene of the film (the recording at Coney Island) a quick camera shot reveals a large object falling into the ocean.  It has been oft-confirmed that this object was a satellite and that the excavation of said satillite woke up the monster who “[has] been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years.” [J.J. Abrams]  (2) Loyal fans of Abrams and Cloverfield (yeah, that’s me) who waited out the end credits to see if there was a reveal at the very end heardquite the treat.  An unknown person whispers softly “It’s still alive.”  When played backwards the audio plays “Help us.” {Listen below.}  All in all, I would place all bets on a sequel coming to theatres soon.  Let the crazy detailed viral marketing and hype begin!

Oh wait…what’s this?  It seems as if viral marketing as started for Cloverfield 2.  Although it is has not been confirmed as an official video for a sequel, and many speculate it may be fan-created, this video is still quite the treat for the Cloverfield following.  Today a video was uploaded to YouTube titled “そこに何ですか?- R U THERE?” by abcharu21.  It contains shaky-cam scenes from what appears to be Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, CA, bizarre cuts to a father playing with his Asian baby, a shot of what may be the monster terrorizing civilians, and it ends with a quick shot of a street sign that reads “Cloverfield.”  Though it may very well be a user-generated video, it seems too authentic to me.  Check it out below and let the hype begin all over again.

[Via Wiki; Comingsoon.net; Movie-Moron]