Prior to its 2008 release, Cloverfield had one of the most successful viral marketing campaigns of its time: an untitled teaser, the striking visual of a headless Lady Liberty, and a mysterious tie-in website garnered a huge amount of interest. Upon its release, Cloverfield had the biggest opening of any movie ever to come out in January. The success of Cloverfield led to discussions of a sequel, and in 2016, 10 Cloverfield Lane hit theaters. A third film — The Cloverfield Paradox — would enter the franchise two years later. But while the films exist in the same universe, they tell markedly different stories. There's a reason. This is the untold truth of the Cloverfield franchise.
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00:00Cloverfield is one of the most curious franchises in Hollywood,
00:04with just a few seemingly disjointed movies and a short manga comic to its name.
00:10So what's the story behind these stories, and just how did the franchise come to be?
00:15This is the untold truth of the Cloverfield franchise.
00:20J.J. Abrams has built his career on echoing genre movies of the past,
00:25so it probably won't come as a surprise to find that he
00:28thought up Cloverfield as a way of paying tribute to classic kaiju movies.
00:33However, the circumstances that informed this idea were rooted in a more specific
00:38personal experience, one that made Abrams realize the sorry status of American-made
00:44monster movies. In an interview, Abrams explained,
00:48I got the idea when I went to Japan and saw all these Godzilla toys in the shops.
00:53I realized that America hasn't had a monster movie to call its own,
00:57not since King Kong all those years ago, anyway, and thought it was time to change that.
01:03From this toy store encounter sprang a desire that fueled the creation of not just the original
01:09Cloverfield, but an entire sprawling franchise. In the process, Abrams did indeed create an
01:16ultra-intense monster, one that was more than capable of standing up against cinema's biggest
01:22beasts. One of the most evocative aspects of Cloverfield's marketing campaign was its emphasis
01:28on the beheading of the Statue of Liberty. The decapitated head closed out the film's initial
01:34teaser trailer with a bang, while a headless Lady Liberty featured as the centerpiece of
01:40Cloverfield's poster. By lingering on this image, Cloverfield instantly crafted an aura of fear and
01:47dread around its plot. Obviously, the Statue of Liberty is something Americans assume will always
01:53stand in New York City. When that gets threatened by an unknown menace, well, that's bound to send
02:00a chill up anyone's spine. Lady Liberty's decapitation was actually inspired by the
02:06marketing materials for a classic 1980s action movie. As Cloverfield director Matt Reeves told
02:12IGN, the inspiration came from the poster of Escape from New York. The poster had an image
02:18on it of the head of the Statue of Liberty, and that image was nowhere in the movie, and it's an
02:24incredibly provocative image. The title for the original Cloverfield didn't just spring up out of
02:30thin air. In fact, the project went under several working titles before settling on its final
02:36moniker. During production, Cloverfield was known by a number of different temporary titles,
02:42including Slusho, Chocolate Outrage, and Cheese. Even as the movie's release date approached,
02:48Cloverfield had no title to speak of, with the teaser trailer only promising a release date.
02:55It was later reported that the film might end up going by the name Wreck. As it turned out,
03:00this all helped to keep the first Cloverfield movie cloaked under a veil of secrecy.
03:06The project's marketing was defined by its cryptic nature, and all that constant speculation
03:11over the title helped keep up that reputation. Cloverfield's second trailer, in November 2007,
03:18would eventually give the movie its name, while the movie's follow-ups would further
03:23turn Cloverfield into a full-blown brand. Monster movies tend to function as much as
03:29sociopolitical commentary as they do opportunities to watch huge beasts topple buildings. Just look
03:36at the 1954 movie Godzilla, which is a clear reflection on Japan's nuclear anxiety. In the
03:43case of Cloverfield, director Matt Reeves had a very specific idea of what this particular monster
03:49movie, captured through the lens of found footage, was meant to say about the time in which it was
03:55released. Reeves told Shock Till You Drop,
03:58"[Cloverfield very much speaks to the fear and anxieties of our time, how we live our lives,
04:04constantly documenting things and putting them up on YouTube, sending people videos through email.
04:10We felt it was very applicable to the way people feel now."
04:14Reeves also observed how one moment, in which the lead movie's protagonists encounter another
04:20person filming everything, was meant to remind people that there was more happening in the wider
04:25world of Cloverfield. He continued,
04:27"[Media is so much an aspect of our lives today that even evoking that idea was exciting to us,
04:33that there could be different stories out there."
04:36You still filming?
04:37Yeah. People are gonna want to know how it all went down."
04:42While the beast itself was absent from the vast majority of the marketing for Cloverfield,
04:47the film itself does eventually feature the creature that has come to be dubbed Clover.
04:52In the film, Clover only enjoys a fleeting on-screen presence, with the brevity of its
04:57appearances meant to heighten the sense of fear and uncertainty felt by both the characters
05:02and the audience. Despite its minimal screen time, though, a whole lot of care went into
05:07this creature, particularly in figuring out which real-world animals would come to inspire it.
05:13The primary element emphasized in the monster's behavior was terror. Rather than maliciously
05:20choosing to rampage across New York City, Clover was designed to evoke wild animals,
05:25such as elephants or horses, that have become terrified and begun to run amok.
05:30This lent an extra sense of unpredictability to Clover and its actions. There was no evil plan
05:36driving it, nor any complex motivation behind all that chaos. Clover was simply engaging in
05:43random fits of destruction because, above all else, it was frightened.
05:48On a visual level, underwater creatures such as piranhas were channeled into the design of
05:53the monster's face, a nod to how Clover is an extraterrestrial being that crash-landed
05:59in Earth's oceans. Before he won an Oscar for Best Director for his work on La La Land,
06:05and even prior to directing Whiplash, Damien Chazelle was just another artist looking for
06:11his big break. At one point, that break looked like it might come from bad robot productions.
06:17J.J. Abrams and company enlisted Chazelle to write and direct the original version of
06:2210 Cloverfield Lane, then titled Valencia. Abrams later told Empire magazine,
06:29Actually, Damien Chazelle was originally coming on as a director as well, and he was working on
06:34the script to direct. He did incredible work with aspects of plot and character with his draft.
06:41The eventual director of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Dan Trachtenberg, had nothing but
06:46positive things to say about the feature's original filmmaker. He later told the Q&A
06:51podcast, I have so many things to thank him for. Because he made Whiplash, I got a chance to make
06:57a movie, and he did a great job with the script. He really gifted me with so many things.
07:03When 10 Cloverfield Lane was in production, its cast and crew knew it only as Valencia,
07:09a low-budget thriller hailing from bad robot productions. However, as production went on,
07:15something changed. Before long, Valencia had become a spiritual sequel to Cloverfield,
07:21and the title was altered to 10 Cloverfield Lane.
07:24Crazy is building your ark after the flood has already come.
07:30Rather than being the result of some brilliant plan kept secret by everyone involved in the film,
07:35however, attaching this project to the name Cloverfield was actually a last-minute switch.
07:41Speaking to MovieWeb about how this change came about, director Dan Trachtenberg said,
07:47We wrote an original screenplay. Cloverfield was not in our mind at the time.
07:52During the development process, the idea came up that it could be in the Cloververse.
07:56We were a bit surprised initially, but now when you see the movie, it makes a lot of sense in
08:02terms of tone, twists, turns, and the thriller aspect. It was definitely the right decision.
08:08By attaching the Cloverfield name to 10 Cloverfield Lane,
08:12this new thriller was able to stand out more easily in a crowded marketplace.
08:16Moreover, following up Cloverfield with an otherwise stand-alone project
08:20allowed the film to function as a mostly separate narrative,
08:24rather than simply supporting itself on Cloverfield plot points and shout-outs.
08:29For years after the original Cloverfield was released, news would occasionally come
08:35to light suggesting that a direct follow-up was in development. Just a few weeks after
08:40the original debuted, director Matt Reeves even told Rotten Tomatoes that they were considering
08:45a number of active concepts as to where a follow-up might go. However, the busy schedules
08:50of all those involved in the first Cloverfield, and particularly J.J. Abrams, was constantly
08:56cited as a reason why the project wasn't moving forward. With the release of 10 Cloverfield Lane,
09:02Abrams finally had a chance to reveal why audiences hadn't seen another movie set in
09:07the world of Cloverfield. He told Fandango,
09:10We had so much fun making Cloverfield that when we were done, we felt like we were done with that movie.
09:16And there were a lot of ideas for a follow-up. A lot of things were thrown around. But we now
09:20live in that post-Godzilla, post-Pacific Rim era, where those movies have been made.
09:26So what would we do? With this in mind, Abrams and company opted instead to pursue a more
09:32spiritual sequel to the first movie, and 10 Cloverfield Lane was born.
09:37Much like 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Cloverfield Paradox wasn't always meant to be a part of the
09:43Cloverfield franchise. Originally, it was just a stand-alone science fiction movie called The God
09:49Particle. However, according to the film's writer Oren Uziel, it wasn't long before it became
09:55attached to an already existing franchise. Uziel told Collider,
10:00The Cloverfield Paradox was written before 10 Cloverfield Lane and the expanded Cloverfield
10:06universe even existed as a thing. I don't know exactly when it became a Cloverfield movie.
10:11I think everyone just knew, if it fits — and it does — into that Cloverfield world,
10:17it should, and it can only help. Uziel emphasized that it's not easy marketing an original movie
10:22of any kind these days, and that The God Particle's association with the Cloverfield name
10:28likely gave it a fighting chance at survival.
10:31In its long journey to release, The Cloverfield Paradox went through a series of reshoots that
10:37were initially shrouded in as much secrecy as anything else in the movie. However, once the
10:43project was officially released on Netflix, more details emerged about what those reshoots had
10:49entailed. Apparently, they had been focused on adding a new Earthbound subplot to the movie.
10:55During a Facebook Q&A session, J.J. Abrams noted that scenes in The Cloverfield Paradox
11:01following Michael Hamilton as he navigates the situation on Earth were not originally part of
11:05the script. They were added during these reshoots at the behest of test-screening audiences,
11:11who were curious about what was happening on the ground during the events of the main story,
11:16which takes place in space. This subplot also helped set up the infamous ending of
11:21The Cloverfield Paradox, which explicitly connects the feature
11:25to the original Cloverfield with a certain special cameo.
11:36Today, A Quiet Place is its own mega-franchise, one with a widely recognizable brand name that
11:42can generate sizable box office returns with very little effort. But once upon a time,
11:48the first Quiet Place was just another original horror movie. Not only that,
11:53but there was once a moment where it looked like it would even be folded into the Cloverfield
11:58franchise. Screenwriter Scott Beck told IndieWire,
12:02I guess it crossed our mind and we had spoken to our representatives about that possibility.
12:08We were actually talking to an executive at Paramount about this film, and it felt from
12:12pitch form that there might be a crossover. Luckily, Paramount had other ideas. Beck continued,
12:19But when we finally took the final script into Paramount, they saw it as a totally different
12:24movie. I think in part because, conceptually, it was able to stand on its own.
12:29Given his affinity for original storytelling, Beck was understandably relieved when Paramount
12:35allowed A Quiet Place to stand on its own two legs. And of course, in an ironic twist,
12:41the finished movie became so popular that it spawned a whole new franchise,
12:45one entirely distinct from the Cloverfield name — and arguably more successful, too.