Watch the surprise first trailer for the mysterious Cloverfield sequel
You have to hand it to J.J. Abrams and his mystery box. Late last night, Twitter lit up with reports of a strange new trailer for a movie titled 10 Cloverfield Lane, which was playing before screenings of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Today, Paramount put the trailer online for your obsessive analysis:
So what is 10 Cloverfield Lane, anyway? Details are scarce, but it seems to be the movie previously announced as Valencia, a thriller about a woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) being held in the bomb shelter of a man who claims the world outside has been destroyed (John Goodman). Before this trailer, the outside threat had been described as a "chemical attack" or "nuclear fallout" — but it's just as easy to imagine a version of this story where the outside threat is a Godzilla-esque monster attack, as in the original Cloverfield.
In a statement at Collider, J.J. Abrams offered a vague explanation for 10 Cloverfield Lane's connection to the original. "The idea came up a long time ago during production," he said. "We wanted to make it a blood relative of Cloverfield. The idea was developed over time. We wanted to hold back the title for as long as possible."
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Of course, the original Cloverfield debuted with a similar splash in 2007, when a mysterious untitled trailer played before screenings of Transformers. We'll see if 10 Cloverfield Lane can equal the size of that smash hit — and we won't have to wait long, because it hits theaters on March 11.
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Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.
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