The 2008 film Cloverfield is getting a long-overdue sequel, according to The Hollywood Reporter. According to reports, this film won’t be in the same found-footage format, and unlike the other entries in the Cloverfield universe, it’ll be a direct sequel to the 2008 film.
The film was originally produced by J.J. Abrams and marked Matt Reeves’ film debut — he’s since gone on to helm Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, as well as the forthcoming The Batman. Cloverfield was an early entry in the “found-footage” trend, and followed a group of young people in New York City as it’s attacked by a massive monster. That film left off on an ambiguous note, hinting at a potential continuation.
Over the years, such a sequel’s been discussed, with Reeves noting that there’s another character in the movie that was filming the attack. “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.”
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Reeves had reportedly been speaking with Paramount about helming another film, but that ultimately never materialized, due to the filmmaker’s busy schedule.
However, the Cloverfield name continued on: Abrams’ production company Bad Robot produced a film called 10 Cloverfield Lane in 2016 (directed by Dan Trachtenberg), which followed a young woman who is captured and trapped in a stranger’s basement after some mysterious attacks, and is forced to escape along with another survivor.
Two years later, Bad Robot and Netflix surprised everyone with The Cloverfield Paradox, about a group of astronauts onboard a space station using an experimental particle accelerator, only to contend with the Earth vanishing as things go wrong.
Those two films were conceived of independently and later folded into Bad Robot’s Cloverfield shared universe, but it seems as though this film will be designed to be part of the world from the get-go. According to THR, screenwriter Joe Barton (Humans, iBoy, Invasion) will pen the script, which reportedly won’t rely on the found-footage format. If the project moves forward, it could be the next step in a larger monster franchise for Bad Robot—something to compete against Warner Bros.’ Monsterverse or Pacific Rim franchises with.
Bad Robot hasn’t revealed any details about what to expect from the story, cast, or crew (Reeves isn’t involved), although it’s safe to assume that it’ll probably involve monsters eating people.
