Paramount Pictures and JJ Abrams and his team at Bad Robot are returning to the world of Cloverfield for a sequel. But, like, the actual world of Cloverfield. And an actual sequel. Released in 2008 following a memorably cryptic viral marketing campaign (the iconic untitled first teaser had people even speculating it was a Voltron live-action movie!), Cloverfield was a found-footage style movie that told of a group of New Yorkers who get caught up in the chaos of a giant monster suddenly showing up in the Big Apple.
Now over a dozen years later, The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that a direct sequel is in development. While no director is attached yet, Abrams and Paramount have tapped up-and-coming British writer Joe Barton to pen the film. Barton has a number of upcoming high-profile jobs but he cut his teeth on British TV series and movies such as Humans, Cuffs, and Troy: Fall of a City. Just earlier this month, Barton got his biggest gig to date when it was revealed that he would replace Terrence Winter as showrunner for the planned HBO Max Gotham P.D.-focused series that would spinoff from Matt Reeves’ upcoming film The Batman.
That’s actually quite a coincidence, as it was Cloverfield that was Reeves’ feature film directing debut and would launch his career. After earning $172 million off a $45 million budget, it would also earn two quasi sequels – 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane and 2018’s The Cloverfield Paradox – that told their own unrelated stories in their own universes but had a similar mix of sci-fi and mystery. [SPOILER ALERT] However, the big twist in The Cloverfield Paradox was that through its story about parallel universes it tied together the entire franchise, including retroactively revealing the origin of Cloverfield’s monster. Well, maybe. It’s left a bit ambiguous, much like the ending of Cloverfield itself.
It’s unclear if Barton’s still-untitled film will be following up on any of these threads in some way. The only thing we do know right now is that the still-untitled film will not be in the found-footage format that the original Cloverfield popularized and arguably used best out of all the films in that fad. All other details are currently being kept under lock and key, which is par for the course for these Cloverfield films though – we didn’t even know The Cloverfield Paradox was coming out until a trailer dropped at Superbowl revealing that it would debut on Netflix the very next day! While it would be nice to repeat that type of surprise at this year’s Superbowl (which is just a week away) the COVID-19 pandemic has sort of put a damper on any potential secret movie productions. So for now, just consider this one in very early development still.
Last Updated: February 1, 2021
