The Cloverfield films have made a business model of sneaking up on viewers. The first movie showed up out of nowhere, a surprise production from J.J. Abrams, with a trailer that had a release date, but not even a title. History repeated itself with last year’s 10 Cloverfield Lane, which Abrams also sprung on audiences when the trailer arrived online and in theaters just months ahead of release. But it looks like things are going to be different on this third Cloverfield; you are definitely going to see it coming because it’s just been bumped back from its original release date.
Making movies sounds frustrating. Say you’re screenwriter Oren Uziel, and you’ve just put the finishing touches on your latest script, an original and cerebral sci-fi project that you’re pretty proud of. You’ve sold it to J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot, and it’s gotten a big fancy distribution deal from Paramount. Everything seems to be going well, but there’s a catch — if this movie’s going to get made, it’ll have to be slightly remolded so that it can fit into the Cloverfield extended universe. Why, you may ask? Because moviegoers must be tricked into going to see good movies, and original projects become less scary when they can be clearly tied to another movie the audience already knows they like.
10 Cloverfield Lane managed something virtually impossible in modern Hollywood: Its plot and connection to 2008’s Cloverfield was kept a complete secret up to the day of its trailer release, and even then there was no way to know just how it connected to the previous film until people went to the theater to see it. But, now that the cat’s out of the bag, everyone is looking for possible Cloverfield connections in the next slate of Bad Robot movies coming out in the next few years. Today, we might have just found another one.
10 Cloverfield Lane was the surprise breakout sci-fi of last year, surprising audiences who were underwhelmed by its found-footage predecessor. While the Cloverfield series is already developing a third installment disconnected (maybe) from 10 Cloverfield Lane, Mary Elizabeth Winstead says she’s totally down to bring her character back.
2016 is almost over! Hallelujah! With everything that’s happened in the last 12 months, we can’t wait to rip the last page of our 2016 Spider-Man wall calendar and hang up our 2017 Spider-Man wall calendar.