Back when Bad Robot and J.J. Abrams first announced the development of Overlord, a WWII-set thriller in which a band of paratroopers invades Nazi Germany only to discover gross supernatural experiments, many believed that the sci-fi oddity had its roots in the Cloverfield universe.
Turns out that’s not the case, after Abrams told those in attendance at CinemaCon (h/t TheWrap) that Overlord and Cloverfield 4 are two entirely different things – in fact, we’re now learning that Bad Robot is making serious headway on a direct continuation of Cloverfield, the 2008 found-footage pic which birthed one of the most intriguing and downright mysterious anthology series in modern Hollywood history.
And though it’s said to exist far beyond the confines of the Cloververse, Overlord is still a fascinating project in its own right, not least because it’s the closest thing to a live-action Wolfenstein adaptation that we’re likely to get. It’s R-rated, too, with one report claiming that the footage shown at CinemaCon featured a woman who had been reduced to nothing more than a head and a spinal chord, who pleads with her Nazi captors to put her out of her misery. Yikes.
So it’s small wonder why J.J. Abrams recently deemed Overlord to be a “crazy movie.” In fact, the following quote is pulled from a time when the filmmaker was referring to Julius Avery’s “insane” feature as Cloverfield 4. So perhaps this is all one big bluff? We’ll leave that one to you.
So to talk about what the next one is and what’s going to happen sort of feels counter-intuitive. Overlord … first of all, it’s something that I can’t wait for you to see cause the director, Julius Avery, has done an amazing job on it. But the specifics, you know, we should wait and see. But that’s really a crazy movie.
What we do know is that Wyatt Russell (Black Mirror) and Jovan Adepo have been tapped to lead the charge against the crumbling Third Reich, and they’ll do so once Overlord reaches theaters on October 26th.
