J.J. Abrams supposedly producing actual Cloverfield sequel, for once
Of all the cinematic universes that have cropped up since Marvel and Disney finally proved that a massive, company-wide movie crossover could make you billions upon billions of dollars if actually done right, few have been as transparently constructed-after-the-fact as Bad Robot and Paramount’s supposed Cloverfield franchise of films. Say what you like about the moldering remains of Universal’s Dark universe, but at least most of those (largely hypothetical) goofy-ass monster movies were created as members of the franchise. Whereas J.J. Abrams and his team have had a weird tendency to render movies into Cloverfield films after the fact; both 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox were originally conceived as standalone projects that then found themselves getting Cloverfielded up once Abrams got his hands on the scripts.
All of which is to note our surprise today, as Variety reports that a Cloverfield sequel that actually started life as a Cloverfield sequel is now reportedly in the works. Indeed, the new film—written by Joe Barton—will supposedly serve as an explicit sequel to Abrams’ 2008 monster movie, i.e., the one that actually kicked off our collective cases of Cloverfield fever by asking us to imagine what it would be like if T.J. Miller was the world’s most preternaturally dedicated cameraman.
That being said, the original film’s found footage conceit won’t be repeated for this second (fourth?) movie, on account of it being, well, 2021. Hopefully it won’t abandon the original movie’s “What does a Godzilla movie look like from street level?” conceit, though, because that—along with some savvy marketing—was pretty much the best thing the original film had going for it.
Abrams will produce on the film. Barton recently made headlines when he became showrunner of HBO Max’s The Batman spin-off TV show.