In the late 2000s there was nothing scarier than a found-footage movie, and the 2008 hit Cloverfield was not only a massive hit for J.J. Abrams but helped launch Matt Reeves into the spotlight as one of Hollywood’s hottest directors. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cloverfield is about to return with a proper sequel, with Abrams producing and Joe Barton penning the script.
If Barton’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he just replaced Terence Winter as the showrunner on the new HBO Max Batman TV show. Barton is working closely with Reeves in developing the series, as the show is tied to Reeves’ movie The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader.
The announcement marks the first actual sequel in the franchise and will also represent Abrams’ return to the Cloverfield universe. There have been two other films in the shared universe, 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox, neither of which managed to capture the shock and awe of the original.
Between the viral marketing and the found footage approach, the original Cloverfield grossed $172 million. None of the spin-offs came close to that number, which leads to the question: Do we need another Cloverfield movie?
Yes, another Cloverfield movie is coming and we need it
Cloverfield stood out from other movies in the late 2000s because it relied heavily upon brief glimpses at the monster to supply just enough information to give the audience’s imagination something to work with. It’s not a passive horror movie where jump scares are handed to you on a silver platter. It’s a movie that makes you lean forward and squint at the screen as you question whether you just saw something important.
The found footage horror subgenre was already in existence at the time thanks to movies like The Blair Witch Project. In 2008, Reeves played with the idea that everyone has a cell phone, and the newest phones had built-in cameras to record things much easier than the old 8mm cameras of old, so when something big happens it’s possible to record it in real time.
The new Cloverfield movie will not use the found footage approach, but will hopefully find something as invigorating. Between Abrams and Barton, there’s every reason to think that the new Cloverfield movie will have a story worth telling. It seems like sequels are a dime a dozen, but when it comes to Cloverfield there are lots of places where a story could continue, especially if it follows what happened years after the invasion.
There is no timeline for the new sequel, but Barton’s next project, aptly titled Invasion, is coming soon to Amazon.
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