A New ‘Cloverfield’ Movie Is in Development

Any list of the most impactful marketing campaigns in movie history — not necessarily the movies themselves, but the ads and the trailers specifically — would have to include Cloverfield, which emerged seemingly out of nowhere in the summer of 2007, when a trailer that didn’t even include the title of the film played in front of the first Transformers. That set off a feverish search for information about the mystery project, which wound up being a found-footage horror movie about a Godzilla-type monster rampaging through New York City, as seen through the eyes and camera of a group of friends trying to survive the creature’s attack.

The unique approach worked like a charm, and the movie became one of 2008’s biggest surprise hits, and then begat two more surprise sequels: 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane and 2018’s The Cloverfield Paradox. While 10 Cloverfield garnered strong reviews and did solid numbers at the box office, Paradox was a bit of a critical flop, and was actually sold off by Paramount to Netflix, who released it direct to its streaming service. That seemed to spell the end for the franchise, but now it looks like Paramount is trying to revive it yet again.

Deadline reports that the studio has put a fourth Cloverfield movie into development. This one will be directed by Babak Anvari from a script by Joe Barton. J.J. Abrams is involved once again as a producer through his Bad Robot company, which has been behind all the Cloverfields to date. Deadline says “as with any Cloverfield pic, plot details are being kept under wraps. It also is unknown how this new installment will link to its predecessors, whether its straight sequel to the original or an anthology piece that is set in the Cloverfield universe.”

That’s not much to go on, but if you love mysterious sci-fi projects with big Twilight Zone-y twists, I guess this is good news.