It's been over a decade since Matt Reeves' Cloverfield was released but after several stealth sequels, it would appear that a direct sequel to the found-footage monster movie is in the works. THR has reported that J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures are developing a sequel to Cloverfield and have tapped Joe Barton, who recently became the showrunner of HBO Max's Gotham City Police Department series, with writing the script. According to THR's sources, the sequel will not be in the found-footage format.
Plot details are being kept under wraps, but that's to be expected for anything J.J. Abrams is involved in. Although Matt Reeves is not involved in the project at this time, Abrams is onboard to produce the Cloverfield sequel. The original 2008 film followed a group of New Yorkers as the city found itself under attack from a giant monster, and thanks to an imaginative viral marketing campaign, the film became a massive success and spawned two loosely connected sequels, 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox. There had been talk of more films falling under the Cloverfield banner, with Overlord long rumoured to be connected and A Quiet Place once considered to join the franchise, but audience disappointment with The Cloverfield Paradox seemingly put the series on hiatus, until now.
J.J. Abrams was also asked in 2018 whether or not the franchise might bring together characters and monsters from the previous movies into a potential team-up movie, and although it's all theoretical, it is something they were once considering. "We’ve talked about versions of things," Abrams explained, "like when we did 10 Cloverfield Lane, we were thinking Michelle – the character Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays – it’s such a sort of weird origin story of this kind of incredibly, I think, awesome heroine, that idea of following her story is really cool. And then at one point, we were like, ‘You know what would be really cool? What if they crossed paths with Gugu [Mbatha-Raw]’s character Ava?’ You start to think of ‘what ifs.’ And I think the bigger ideas that we’ve had about where this thing goes haven’t necessarily been those ideas, but they’ve kind of been fun theoretical offshoots." What are your hopes for the Cloverfield sequel?