Photo-illustration: Getty Images, Courtesy of
Paramount
J.J. Abrams Still Stumped on ‘Cloverfield 2’
When J.J. Abrams’s motion-sick monster comedy, Cloverfield, earned back twice its $25 million budget in its opening weekend, Paramount ordered a sequel pretty much immediately. Abrams and director Matt Reeves said they were game, but Cloverfield 2’s existence would depend on how fast they could come up with a compelling way to continue the original film’s story. Various possible gimmicks (a prequel story, the monster could attack a different city, the original attack could be shown from the perspective of a different camcorder, etc.) were mentioned in interviews, but nothing official ever announced. On Wednesday, Collider ran into Reeves at the Saturn Awards (at which Cloverfield won Best Sci-Fi Film), and it sounds like they’re still stumped.
“It’s not dead in the water,†says Reeves. “It’s probably more sort of on hold. The thing that we promised ourselves is that we only wanted to do another one if we could come up with something that felt as fresh to us as [the original did]. We’re still toying with what it’s going to be and whether or not it’s going to be as exciting to make and, hopefully, for an audience to watch [as the first one].â€
We can certainly understand the difficulty involved with trying to build a franchise around a mostly unseen monster and a bunch of unsympathetic yuppie characters who are all now (spoiler alert!) dead, but surely J.J. Abrams — who, we’ll remind you, was able to sustain Lost’s entire third season without having a single idea — can come up with something, right? Couldn’t the monster just attack a bunch of professional cinematographers this time? We’d be pretty compelled and excited if we could watch a Cloverfield movie without throwing up.
Exclusive Video Interview with Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves [Collider via Fark]