The Cloverfield universe is set to expand, so here’s all the info available about the 2017 instalment.
In sci-fi movie franchises, it seems, the less you know the more desperate you get for answers. JJ Abrams' Cloverfield franchise is becoming the gold standard of such less-is-more moviemaking. The 2008 original, made up of found camcorder footage of a gigantic monster laying waste to Manhattan, became a thriving online cult due to the scarcity of full-frontal monster shots and its steadfast refusal to explain the slimy great batlizard’s origins, leaving fans scrabbling for clues in hard-to-spot background events and post-credits sound effects. It’s (extremely loose) follow-up 10 Cloverfield Lane was an entirely different film altogether, a bunker-based drama that only vaguely dovetailed with the first film in the final few minutes. It seems Cloverfield is turning into the first franchise made up of films from entirely different genres, and the third film in this broad universe, currently titled Cloverfield 2017, takes the franchise even further out there. Like, so out there, there’s nothing else there…
What the release date of Cloverfield 2017?
Cloverfield 2017 – if that is indeed what it ends up being called – hits screens on October 27.
What’s the plot?
Have you, like us, always been a bit worried that the Large Hadron Collider will end up sucking the earth into the 28th dimension through a pinhole-sized black hole of its own making? Then Cloverfield 2017 will be your worst nightmares made celluloid: the crew of a space station find themselves utterly alone in the cosmos when – major bummer - an experiment at CERN causes the entire earth to disappear. And if you think that removing all of humanity from the equation this early on might reduce dramatic tension somewhat, just wait until a space shuttle appears carrying what’s described as “a shocking discovery” that will have them fighting for survival. Kinda Gravity meets Life then, it sounds like.
Is that the same film that was previously called God Particle?
Almost certainly. God Particle – named after the Higgs-Boson particle which the Large Hadron Collider was built to find – was originally put on release schedules for February 2017, then moved to October, then pulled from the schedules just as Cloverfield 2017 appeared in the same IMAX spot.
Who’s in the cast of Cloverfield 2017?
A reasonable array of rising stars man the distresses station, including David Oyelowo, who played Martin Luther King Jr in 2014’s Selma, Gugu Mbatha-Raw fresh from Miss Sloane, The Great Gatsby’s Elizabeth Debicki and Chris O’Dowd, here travelling further than we ever felt possible from The IT Crowd’s basement.
Who’s directing?
Produced by JJ Abrams (Executive Producer of the new Westworld TV show), the newest Cloverfield has been handed over to the little-known New York filmmaker Julius Ohan to direct, last seen making videos for Avicii.
How does it fit into the Cloverfield universe and the ARG?
You guessed it – loosely. Amongst a vast amount of extra info about dodgy drilling companies hiding dark secrets at the bottom of the sea and the eco-warriors trying to bring them down, players of Cloverfield Alternate Reality game online came across an audio tape from the ISS reporting to Earth describing a ‘red light’. Fans have seen this as a link between the new and original films, although screenwriter Oren Uziel has explained how the new film became a Cloverfield release almost by accident.
“It was written before 10 Cloverfield Lane and the expanded Cloverfield universe even existed as a thing,” he told Collider. “It was a spec that I wrote probably a year or so after Shimmer Lake, so it definitely existed as its own science-fiction. And then after years of, you know how scripts kind of hang around—people like them but for whatever reason they decided to make it and then suddenly everything fell into place with J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot, and Paramount. I don’t know exactly when it became a Cloverfield movie, but I suspect in this current market where it’s just harder and harder to market an original movie of any kind, a science-fiction movie in particular, but I think everyone just knew if it fits—and it does—into that Cloverfield world, it should, and it can only help.”
“When you turn on The Twilight Zone, that’s sort of the way I think about it,” he continued. “I don’t know what this story is going to be, but I know it’s going to be a Twilight Zone story… It’s like an anthology for those kinds of movies, and I think if J.J., if what he’s doing is positioning himself a little bit to be the Rod Serling of J.J.-type science-fiction movies, more power to him.”
Online fans have suggested that the fact that the new film is set in space might suggest that it’s something of a prequel to the first film – perhaps the dot that crashes into the sea at the end of Cloverfield was the result of whatever’s set to happen in the new film, and the New York-crushing monster grew out of it? Beware though – travel too far down such lines of thinking and before you know it you’ll find yourself posting 40-minute theory videos to YouTube and never having sex again.
If the Earth is gone, how can there be another Cloverfield movie after this one?
Well plot descriptions so far describe the space station crew as existing in an ‘altered reality’ and the Earth as ‘seemingly’ gone, which sounds like a classic get-out-of-destroying-the-Earth twist if ever we’ve heard one.
