Is Cloverfield getting a Sequel? (10 Cloverfield Lane Trailer Analysis)

It’s genuinely much harder nowadays for any major film production to maintain any level of secrecy given the expansive nature of the internet. In an age where it’s now incredibly easy to find information online, we pretty much always know when new films are set to come out and there have been plenty of instances where a major aspect of a film that wasn’t intended to be revealed before the film’s release gets leaked online. Sometimes it actually does end up spilling out through the official marketing campaign, hence why you tend to see a lot of complaints from people when they feel that trailers/TV spots/etc. are showing too much. But a lot of times it ends up getting leaked not from the studio but through sites like Heroic Hollywood and quite frankly I don’t see why this is ever meant to be a good thing. I mean imagine how less of an impact older films like ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘The Usual Suspects’ would have if their big twists were leaked online weeks before the film was meant to come out. It’s gotten to the point where whole films like ‘The Expendables 3’ got leaked online weeks before release, which most definitely had some sort of impact on their eventual commercial performance. Thankfully there have been some filmmakers who have made an effort to maintain a shroud of secrecy surrounding their films and perhaps the most notable filmmaker at the moment who does this is J.J. Abrams. While it hasn’t always worked out for him (e.g. the Khan reveal in ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ that the internet figured out months in advance), for the most part he’s been able to keep us guessing about the secrets behind his films, even ones as big as ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, a film which most people, including me, legitimately did not know anything major about the plot until seeing it. And this past week he pulled another fast one on us by debuting a trailer for a new film of his two months before its intended release date on March 11^th.

This new film, as Abrams describes it, is a ‘blood relative’ to a film that he produced eight years ago; one that has left its fans clamoring for a sequel. Before J.J. became known as the director of projects like the ‘Star Trek’ reboot films and ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, he produced 2008’s ‘Cloverfield’, a found-footage monster film directed by Matt Reeves, who would of course go on to direct the critically acclaimed ‘Planet of the Apes’ sequel ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’. The first teaser for the film debuted at screenings for Michael Bay’s first ‘Transformers’ film back in 2007. But the big thing about this teaser was that it was released without a title. All it showed, aside from J.J.’s producer credit, was a bunch of people at a going-away party in New York for one of their friends that was interrupted by something happening in the city. It wasn’t until the film’s viral marketing kicked off when the title was officially confirmed to be ‘Cloverfield’ and the film’s true nature as a monster film was revealed. Once it was released in January 2008, it was a sizable critical and commercial hit, especially considering it was a January release. It scored a 77% RT rating and grossed over $170 million on just a $25 million budget. Talk of a potential sequel then began to circulate over the next few years. As Reeves put it, the film established various possibilities for a sequel due to the fact that the film’s protagonists probably weren’t the only people who were filming the events of that night. But for the next few years, nothing ever materialized… until now. And as it turned out, it happened without any of us knowing about it as it was filmed under the title ‘Valencia’.

The sequel, officially titled ‘10 Cloverfield Lane’, was announced via the same method that was used with the first film; through a teaser trailer that debuted without warning before a Michael Bay film, in this case his newest film ‘13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi’. However, this time around the film is not being directed by Matt Reeves, who’s currently working on the follow-up to ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’. Instead the film is to be directed by a newcomer, Dan Trachtenberg, who some of you might recognize as the former host of podcasts like ‘The Totally Rad Show’ and ‘Geekdrome’. And unlike the first film, which of course was shot in the found-footage format, this film eschews that style in favor of the more traditional format which, unlike the first film, certainly won’t cause some people to get sick while watching it. Not only that, but the trailer suggests that this is a much different film compared to ‘Cloverfield’ in terms of style. The trailer shows a group of three people (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher Jr.) just living their lives within an underground cellar; playing board games, listening to the jukebox, etc. Everything seems hunky dory at first but as the trailer goes on, the mood starts to get a bit more sinister, culminating in Winstead’s character attacking Goodman’s character and attempting to flee from the cellar. But before she can get outside, with Goodman screaming at her from behind a locked door warning her not to open the door because that’ll get them all killed, she gets a glimpse of something outside that leaves her completely stunned.

At the moment, nothing has been made official about how the film is supposed to be connected to ‘Cloverfield’. I presume that the monster from the first film, named ‘Clover’ by the production team, will probably make some sort of appearance but considering that the film supposedly takes place after the events of the previous film, apparently as much as 10 years, I have the feeling that it isn’t guaranteed that this will happen. In fact, did the monster even survive the ending of the first film? Because it seemed like that ending was pretty darn conclusive. I’ve also heard rumors that this wasn’t even intended to be ‘Cloverfield 2’ in the first place and that the connections to ‘Cloverfield’ came solely as a result of re-writes and re-shoots. Apparently the film, which was shot in late 2014 for the record, had already been completed under the aforementioned title of ‘Valencia’ but was abandoned when its distributor, Paramount’s Insurge Pictures label, was dismantled last year. But then it was apparently resurrected by Paramount who instigated re-writes in order to connect it to ‘Cloverfield’, with one of the new writers notably being ‘Whiplash’ director Damien Chazelle, which subsequently led to reshoots this past year. I mean, I can see how that would make sense seeing how J.J. and his producing partner Bryan Burk are pretty much the only major people involved with both films. As stated earlier, Matt Reeves isn’t involved with the project, nor is writer Drew Goddard. It could potentially be argued that this is Paramount solely attempting to cash in on the ‘Cloverfield’ franchise by shoving the name onto a film that wasn’t at all intended to be a ‘Cloverfield’ sequel.  

But even with that potential outcome in mind, I have to admit that I’m really looking forward to seeing this film, if primarily for sheer curiosity. While I didn’t see it when it was released in theaters, I did like ‘Cloverfield’ so I’m interested in seeing how this film is meant to connect to it. It’s cool that the film is opting for what very much seems to be a different kind of story compared to the previous film. The trailer gives off what I can best describe as a ‘claustrophobic thriller’ vibe, as it seems like it will mostly take place within that underground cellar and focus solely on the three main characters. Plus, as I already went over earlier, it’s insane that a film like this could be kept hidden from the public in the modern internet age until just less than two months before its intended release. Whether or not you’re a fan of J.J.’s ‘mystery box’ method, you do have to commend the guy for at least staying true to this method in a time where you rarely see that happen anymore in the film industry. Again, this may end up just being a case where the rumor of it being nothing more than a ‘cash-grab’ is true and we were just fooled by the marketing. But the cool thing about this first trailer is that because it is so mysterious, it could legitimately go either way. We really don’t know that much about it at the moment, and that’s what makes it so fascinating to me, hence why I’m definitely interested in seeing it when it comes out.

So what do you folks think about ‘10 Cloverfield Lane’? Are you going to go see it? Have any theories on how it’s supposed to connect to ‘Cloverfield’? Do any of you agree with the rumor that it wasn’t meant to be a sequel in the first place? Sound off in the comments below.