Cloverfield 2: What the Heck Happened to the Long-Awaited Sequel?

Mike

Cloverfield fans have spent more than fifteen years asking some remarkably straightforward questions: What happened after the monster attacked New York? Where did the monster come from? And most importantly… where is Cloverfield 2? No, not THOSE Cloverfield sequels. Sure, they gave us a pretty good bunker thriller and a space station disaster… each with their own merits and shortcomings. But still, fans like us are starting to feel like Ben Affleck in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back screaming, “Good Lord, when?!? When’s it gonna be my time?”

There are three Cloverfield movies, yet we’re all still waiting for Cloverfield 2 to pop its big ugly, yet beautiful head out from behind another state monument. In today’s video, we’ll be going back in time to the origins of what made Cloverfield work, the choices behind the two spin-offs, and most importantly, piecing together all of the red light, green light, 1, 2, 3 this franchise has done with the movie we’re ACTUALLY all waiting for, and finally… try to see if there’s any hope for a true follow-up. And what would that movie actually look like?

THE BEGINNING

After an insanely cool Blair Witch Project-inspired marketing run that captivated moviegoers and online sleuths everywhere… Cloverfield made its debut on the big screen as promised on January 18th of 2008. You may or may not have known it then… but the talent behind this thing was astounding. Produced by Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams, written by future Project Hail Mary helmer Drew Goddard, and directed by The Batman’s Matt Reeves. The film proved that the monster juice was worth the squeeze (which, let’s not use that analogy again because it just makes me think of Luke Skywalker and the whole unfortunate green tit milk situation) – on its way to earning more than $170 million worldwide against a budget of just around $25 million.

At that rate, you would think an immediate, obvious sequel would be a no-brainer. But no.

The attraction to Cloverfield as a movie came from a mix of awesome marketing, found-footage horror, and of course post-9/11 PTSD. The images shown on social media each anniversary of the horrifying event ring eerily similar to what New York City experienced as the monster and all of its horrors rained down upon them. But even without that, the simple idea of experiencing a Godzilla-like monster attack from the viewpoint of the specks of nothing we looked like to it on the ground was fascinating. Who hasn’t sat in traffic and looked at the skyline wondering what it would look like if a monster attacked us in real life? Cloverfield gave us that experience from the safety of our homes. Not only that, but showing the monster in brief glimpses caught on handheld cameras brought with it a completely different fear that monster movies had yet to explore. It wasn’t just a movie. It was a ride. An experience. And one that you would think they would have capitalized on much sooner.

The creative side of the equation should have been a quick starter. As Matt Reeves himself says on the film’s commentary, they purposefully included a moment where another person can be seen filming our survivors. This was specifically to show that the very night of the Cloverfield monster attack, there were thousands of different vantage points and stories going on throughout that very same evening. The possibilities for sequels would have had Jason Blum looking at sequel scripts like Steve and Doug Butabi the night they finally got into the Roxbury. There were also other survivors’ viewpoints from the night, including an entire military and government response. There was a crazy desire to know more about where the monster came from, why this happened, and what the future held.

VIRAL MARKETING

The viral marketing for Cloverfield was some of the best you’ve ever seen in your life… but it also created a following of its own that only furthered fans’ insatiable thirst to dig deeper into the rabbit hole. There was a viral marketing campaign with a breadcrumb trail of clues that threatened to explain the monster’s origins, which centered around a goofy Japanese frozen drink called Slusho. Ironically, the same company that Rob in the movie is headed to Japan to work for. The drink had a mysterious secret ingredient called Seabed’s Nectar that came from deep within the ocean from a company called Tagruato. Fans digging through fake corporate websites, employee messages, and “hacked pages” found that the company’s secret deep-sea drilling station encountered something enormous on the ocean floor while extracting the nectar. An environmental group accused the company of covering the dangerous activity up, while leaked sonar images appeared to show the gigantic creature under the water. Shortly before the movie’s events… viral news footage shows that the deep-sea drilling station had been destroyed, seemingly by the monster, which was apparently headed to New York City.

This was all unveiled through marketing and games for the fans to have fun with, but it’s not nothing. J.J. Abrams himself called it “almost” an origin story and confirmed that the Clover monster had been lying beneath the ocean for thousands of years. There’s also been talk that Clover is just a “baby” itself, suffering from separation anxiety and freaking the shit out because it doesn’t know where its mother is. Which, to me, paints a beautiful possibility of a sequel down the road where its even bigger and scarier mother is pissed off that we survived its child. That’s just where my movie-laden brain goes. Bigger with every sequel. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. As we did back in 2018 when we thought a direct sequel was a no-brainer.

SEQUEL TALKS BEGIN

By the end of 2008, Reeves was already reportedly in talks for a sequel, and for unknown reasons that fizzled out. Everyone involved was kind of saying the same things you always hear and are unsure whether or not to believe. “Yes, we want to do a sequel, but only if the story is right.” The next thing you know, nobody seems to be able to make the schedule work to get in a room and figure it out. Which is reasonable at this point in the now-blowing-up careers of three future Hollywood heavyweights. But the amount of time this thing was about to sit on the shelf would become the stuff of legend.

By 2009 at WonderCon, J.J. Abrams said they had a “pretty cool idea” for a follow-up but kind of kept with the same attitude… there were weak promises, but nothing was on the cusp of happening just yet. This continued into 2010 whenever Abrams or Reeves were asked about the project. The only time you would hear anything about it is when the subject came up while promoting the things they were actually actively working on at the time. Which, let me be clear, is totally fair. Let these gentlemen spread their creative wings and enjoy the fruits of their success.

In this case, those wings went to another very Cloverfield-esque project in Abrams’ Super 8. Despite fan hopes they were connected… they weren’t. Which is a theme that will continue as we go through this story. In April of 2012, writer Drew Goddard (who seemed the most willing to return of anyone else in the trio at this point) told Screen Anarchy that part of the reason they weren’t up and running on a sequel immediately after the first film was because of the power of J.J. Abrams’ pull at the time. He said normally, the studio would have pushed an IP that successful into sequel territory immediately, but that with Abrams they were given breathing room. But now, the downside of all that was that they’ve all become extremely busy and “All these other damn movies have gotten in the way.”

By 2013, Abrams told Playboy in a disappointing update that “Part of me just wants to let Cloverfield 2 go” before mentioning that he’s looking forward to Pacific Rim and wondering if the upswing in other monster movies would inspire them in the future. Which is a big mystery-box-sized middle-finger bummer update that shines a clear light on the fact that they weren’t anywhere near a Cloverfield 2 at this point. While on one hand, waiting for inspiration could protect a good movie from an unnecessary sequel… it’s starting to feel like we’re being friend-zoned.

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE

Around the same time this dilly-dallying was happening around a Cloverfield sequel, in 2012, Paramount bought the rights to an impressive script by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken for a film called The Cellar. The script was handed over to Abrams’ Bad Robot label to develop and was given a rewrite by up-and-coming writer and director Damien Chazelle. Chazelle intended to direct the film before his passion project received funding and he left to direct that instead. That project? 2015 Best Picture Academy Award nominee Whiplash. Instead, production for The Cellar (now titled Valencia for secrecy reasons) was planned to get underway in 2014 with future Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg getting directing duties based on a live-action short film he made based on the popular game series Portal.

At the start, before the Cloverfield tie-in, the script had been an original project with a reportedly strong Twilight Zonevibe. But Abrams says he later noticed that it shared so many elements of the DNA of Cloverfield and decided to shroud in secrecy his plans to fuse it with Cloverfield. It was so secretive, in fact, that even cast member John Gallagher Jr. wasn’t told about the Cloverfield tie-in until shooting was already underway. Even Mary Elizabeth Winstead was unaware of the true title of the film, 10 Cloverfield Lane, until mere hours before the trailer was released. But if you’re wondering if this should count as the Cloverfield 2 we were all waiting for… even Abrams himself makes the clarification that “this movie is very purposefully not called Cloverfield 2, because it’s not Cloverfield 2.”

In 10 Cloverfield Lane, a young woman named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character) wakes up chained inside an underground bunker, where a man named Howard (played by the great John Goodman) claims he rescued her from an attack that has made the outside air deadly. Alongside another survivor in Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.’s character), she tries to adjust to life underground, but Howard’s increasingly sus behavior and holes in his story make her question whether or not this guy is full of bologna. As she uncovers freaky secrets and plans her escape, she discovers that the danger inside the bunker may only be part one of her nightmare. But even as she finds her way outside… there’s no Cloverfield monster to be found. Just a smattering of other fucked-up wonders.

Still, despite the lack of a direct tie-in, the name proved to still be something that had the power to pull in viewers. Even without the monster or the direct continuation of the original film’s events. The movie was released in March of 2016 and pulled in around $110 million on a budget of just $15 million. 10 Cloverfield Lane was also a critical success despite being taken from its original state and being “plugged and played” into another franchise. While the franchise proved it could continue to find ways to surprise audiences and keep the mystery alive by popping up horrors when least expected and in unorthodox ways… we were still left waiting for a legitimate sequel.

When Fangoria later asked Abrams the question we’re all wondering: “Why not just make Cloverfield 2?”, he responded that when they made the original film, they felt like they “were done with that movie.” He said that at one point there wasa direct follow-up planned which featured “this really big idea for doing three different things at once.” But that the world now had other Godzilla movies and Pacific Rim in play, which changed the situation they found themselves in. Even at this point, Abrams mentioned that he and Goddard had recently spoken about a direct continuation but still didn’t have a solid idea nailed down. Which is exactly why he pivoted to 10 Cloverfield Lane. BUT he didn’t slam the door entirely, saying that something larger was at play in this universe that could result in something cool if they were eventually able to bring it to fruition. It’s like that one shot you have after a bad day at the golf course. They kept giving us hope. But we still suck at golf.

But for now, again in a post-Pacific Rim and new-Godzilla-iterations-filled world… the plan was clear. They seemed to be content finding strong new thrillers and developing them into the Cloverfield world. Which is exactly what would happen next.

GOD PARTICLE

Later that same year, reports of a new Cloverfield film titled God Particle started to trickle out. Which is a fantastic-sounding idea for a film revolving around this universe. A name like God Particle really stings the nostrils. It’s provocative and gets the people going (to quote two different classic Will Ferrell movies). This had originally been mentioned in 2012 with Paramount and Bad Robot Productions as an original spec script that had been acquired from Oren Uziel (who wrote the 2021 Mortal Kombat reboot). However, this was the same situation we had with The Cellar in that it was a project acquired before it was apparently ever intended to be a part of the Cloverfield universe (and was even acquired around the same time as The Cellar script had been).

What we have with this next iteration is pretty much the same story as 10 Cloverfield Lane. A thriller script acquired and shifted around to fit the mold of a Cloverfield story. Eventually the title God Particle became listed on the release schedule as “2017 Cloverfield Movie,” which would once again give us hope that we were maybe, just maybe, going to receive our direct follow-up. The film remained shrouded in mystery and eventually jumped around the release date schedule time and time again. During this time, the production budget also ballooned from $5 million to $40 million and Paramount became concerned. So concerned that they decided to rid themselves of it entirely and sell it to Netflix for $50 million, guaranteeing themselves a profit for the film now being helmed by eventual Captain America: Brave New Worlddirector Julius Onah. It’s worth noting that Paramount made this choice after viewing the completed film. It’s also worth noting that Paramount maintained at the time that they still planned on future releases in the franchise to take place theatrically, which to me signifies that they were also aware of just how palpable an eventual ACTUAL Cloverfield 2 would be. All of this was frustrating and confusing, but one really cool decision would finally add a layer of surprise Cloverfield-style marketing to all of it.

On February 4th, 2018, as the Eagles defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, a surprise trailer for The Cloverfield Paradox dropped out of absolutely nowhere. And here’s the kicker: The movie would be surprise-dropping THAT NIGHT after the game and on Netflix. That’s big-balls marketing. They didn’t even inform the actors about this drop until the morning of that very Super Bowl. The only problem? The movie, well… I mean, it kinda sucked.

All the excitement about a surprise Cloverfield movie drop was quickly sucked out of the room when the watching experience went from intriguing to confusing and finally fell into boring territory. It’s not a film worth many rewatches, and the simplest way to explain all this is that in the future, Earth was running out of energy and attempted testing a powerful particle accelerator in space. But when they turned it on, suddenly something goes horribly wrong and rips open reality. Finally, they realize the experiment possibly opened doorways into different universes, leading to the Earth being attacked by the Cloverfield monster… I… think. I’ve never watched it again and I don’t have plans to in the future. A far cry from the infinitely rewatchable original film.

AFTER THE PARADOX

After the disappointment of The Cloverfield Paradox, rumors existed for months that the upcoming Bad Robot-produced Julius Avery film Overlord (an underrated flick about a Nazi experiment gone wrong) could be the next Cloverfield tie-in movie.

However, in April of 2018, J.J. Abrams promised that it would not be. But he did promise journalists at CinemaCon that they WERE, in fact, actually developing a full-on dedicated, true Cloverfield follow-up. Whether this meant the actual Cloverfield 2 or just a movie that wasn’t pieced together out of spare parts was unclear. And keep in mind… this was eight years ago.

The speculation and rumors continued. Which is just proof of how badly people want this thing. When hit John Krasinski and Emily Blunt horror film A Quiet Place took over theaters in 2018, writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods revealed that they actually had a conversation with Paramount in which they thought their film COULD have eventually become another film in the Cloverfield universe. And it makes sense when you look at the storyline, no doubt, but according to them Paramount saw A Quiet Place as its own thing… and they were happy about that. And it turns out they were right. In 2020, Kristen Stewart’s underwater, Godzilla-adjacent flick Underwater also sparked rumors that it could be connected with the universe as well. But as we now know, the aquatic horror flick stood on its own as well.

By 2021, The Hollywood Reporter reported what appeared would be some concrete news. Finally. The site reported that a new Cloverfield movie was in the works from J.J. Abrams to be written by British writer Joe Barton. All that was known about the project at the time was that it would NOT be another found-footage project. And that was it. Silence. Until September of 2022, when it was reported that relatively unknown-at-the-time director Babak Anvari would be directing the Joe Barton script. In October of 2022, Barton told Variety that he was, in fact, writing the script by himself and NOT with J.J. Abrams, but that Abrams was producing and would provide notes as the project progressed. At that time he said that he was hoping he was close to a “last sort of big script push” and that they were close to finally going into production. Still, for those hoping this was going to be the big Cloverfield 2 we were hoping for… his comments didn’t support that. The writer mentioned that while he likes that there were obvious expectations, he expected some to be defensive of the route they were taking, and that people would have their own preconceptions, but that he felt like they were making something he himself would like to see.

And once again, my friends… silence.

In May of 2023, we reported that the viral marketing website Slusho.com had reappeared seemingly out of nowhere. The site is still active currently and doesn’t offer much, in all honesty. You bring it up, it mentions the Slusho drink and that “you can’t drink just six” while allowing you to mix flavors and come up with a pretty confusing concoction of basically nothing.

And I hate to report… get ready for a whole lot more nothing.

Fast-forward to June 27th of 2024, when supposed writer Joe Barton tweeted that he hadn’t been involved with any talks of the franchise since the writers’ strike. He noted that he “thinks” they were still messing with the script and hoped that one day it might be made. He followed that up by saying that he heard another writer was currently having a pass at the script.

In March of 2025 at South by Southwest, supposed director Anvari was asked about the film while promoting another project and declined to reveal anything at all other than he hoped audiences would eventually receive something amazing.

Most recently, the Ewan McGregor-fronted The End of Oak Street prompted some new hope in, at the very least, anotherspin-off film, considering J.J. Abrams’ involvement. But once again, bupkis. Though I will say The End of Oak StreetDID provide an Amblin-esque take on the Jurassic Park franchise that’s better than most Jurassic Park sequels… it’s nothing in the realm of Cloverfield. Though one could argue they left the cause of the events in the film so vague… a potential sequel could still make that connection happen? We’re talking Angels in the Outfield levels of hope at this point.

Most recently, The Vast of Night director Andrew Patterson revealed to TheWrap that he did, in fact, have conversations with Bad Robot about directing a Cloverfield film in the future, but that he worried about taking part in any possible long development processes… making it seem like they aren’t anywhere close to anything legitimate. Unfortunately… that’s where we’re all left. With a big pile of wishing in one hand and Cloverfield monster shit in the other.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Though this has all been a very disparaging road of hope and eventual letdowns… one thing remains true. The people want Cloverfield 2. There is still, to this day, all these years later, no doubt that an announcement (hopefully a really cool and inventive one that could happen at any moment) would create massive waves of excitement around movie fans. And don’t get me wrong… nobody wants a generic, thoughtless, money-grabbing sequel that fails to capture the genius of the original. Nor do we want a CGI-laden popcorn film that carries no weight whatsoever. But the possibilities to build upon what that first film did remain endless. You could tell the story of where the monster came from in a prequel, you could follow an enriched storyline from another point of view that takes place at ground zero like the original. Or you could continue the story of what happened after the events of the first film.

There’s no doubt that the wave of endless found-footage horror projects has since subsided in the years that have passed… perhaps enough time has passed that an ingenious idea surrounding another Cloverfield movie featuring found footage would feel fresh rather than outdated. Whether it’s an established director with a fresh idea like Roland Emmerich or a frequent Paramount collaborator like Christopher McQuarrie or even J.J. Abrams himself… the platform is there. The public demand remains. The endless storyline possibilities remain for a franchise that has not only public demand… but creative possibilities. Cloverfield 2 might be one of those rare opportunities where IP and creativity align for someone to create something both commercial and inventive. Not to mention the fact that the horror genre is currently experiencing a gold rush the likes of which we’ve rarely ever seen.

These elements provide the perfect breeding ground for an inventive marketing stunt paired with an original idea that could absolutely rock the box office in the year of our dark lord 2026. So even though we’ve suffered false start after false start when it comes to the possibility of seeing the Cloverfield monster rising again, I say despair not. What sits in front of us is a possible creative and box office home run that I sincerely doubt these studios can resist for much longer. Though J.J. Abrams’ IMDb page boasts an astounding 23 projects in the works (one of which still remains an untitled Cloverfield sequel), Matt Reeves is deep inside the Batman-verse, and Drew Goddard has a litany of his own possible big-hitter projects in the works… Cloverfield 2 sits before us as a possible home run for everyone. Will we sit dormant much longer? Will another project be shaped into another Cloverfield side story? Or will we finally… before it’s too late… embark on an actual Cloverfield 2 that could turn itself into the Godzilla-level phenomenon that J.J. Abrams once envisioned for his own country? Time will tell. But Cloverfield fans remain hopeful. And I feel like there’s a good reason for that.