The Cloverfield franchise is a project that’s particularly fascinating in an era of Hollywood filmmaking that seems to hinge on ever-increasing levels of series cohesion. While loyal audiences of the biggest film franchises purposefully seek out closely woven connections between entries, Cloverfield is atypical in its nature as an anthology series. These are films that appear to share only the loosest of connections, while building an expansive new cinematic universe.
It began in 2008, with the giant success of Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield. A high concept, invigorating take on both genre and artistic convention, the movie not only launched Reeves’ career into the stratosphere, but it also provided the seed for J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot to do something very different. The then in-development film titled The Cellar, was gently re-tooled as 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane – directed by Dan Trachtenberg – a standalone story connected to the events of Cloverfield only by its sparse, viral marketing campaign and the implications of its third act.
But then The Cloverfield Paradox hit and kind of derailed the franchise. Arriving on Netflix with next to no marketing, it bombed pretty hard with both critics and fans, despite featuring an all-star cast comprised of David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Daniel Brühl, Chris O’Dowd, Ziyi Zhang and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 star Elizabeth Debicki. We won’t get into all of its problems here, as they’ve already been discussed to death, but it seems that the frosty reception it received hasn’t deterred Paramount.
The studio intends to push forward with this intriguing cinematic universe and tonight, they’ve announced that they’re developing a proper Cloverfield sequel. It’s important to note that this is a completely different project from Overlord (which, as it turns out, won’t be part of the franchise, after all). Details are scarce at this early stage, but during their presentation at CinemaCon, Paramount noted that the follow-up will be coming soon to theaters and is a “true, dedicated sequel” – unlike 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox, which were more standalone entries that simply had a few ties to the original.
Though we know next to nothing about what the studio has planned here, just the very news that a proper sequel is coming our way is enough to get us exited. After all, people have been asking for one ever since Cloverfield first released back in 2008 and if you’ve seen the film, you’ll know that there are more than enough roads to explore with a follow-up. Not to mention that there are still plenty of questions that need to be answered.
At the moment, we’re unsure of when Paramount plans to reveal what else they’ve got in store for us, but as always, watch this space for more!
