’10 Cloverfield Lane’: How J.J. Abrams Made a Secret Sequel
“I don’t know if this is going to work.”
Barely five weeks have passed since Star Wars: The Force Awakens became the highest-grossing film in domestic box office history — which hasn’t stopped J.J. Abrams from being so excited about his next project that he impulsively snagged a coach ticket on a L.A.-to-New York red-eye flight just to talk about it. You can almost hear the butterflies swarming in his stomach as Hollywood’s greatest hype man pinballs around his suite at the Crosby Street Hotel (“Would you like anything to drink? Where do you want to sit? How’s your day going?”) like a rookie magician anxious to see if he pulled off his latest trick.
For Abrams’ first proper foray into the movie landscape, he made an elephant appear from thin air in the middle of a crowded theater. It was the summer of 2007, and as multiplex audiences eagerly waited for their Transformers screenings to start. Suddenly, without warning, they were treated to a trailer for a movie without a title — a mysterious clip in which a Manhattan rooftop party was interrupted by a monstrous roar, courtesy of something large enough to decapitate the Statue of Liberty. Film fans, electrified at having the wool pulled over their eyes, wer teased into a frenzy of anticipation. The result, eventually titled Cloverfield, earned $170.8 million against a $25 million budget when it debuted in January of 2008.
Abrams, who soon became accustomed to navigating far more rabid fan bases, found himself caught off-guard by the residual enthusiasm for his company’s fluke blockbuster. “I was surprised every time that people asked me about a sequel,” he admits. “I’ve always thought it’s so cool that people cared enough about that movie to want more of it. I knew there was something out there that could justify a continuation … just maybe not in the way that people expect.”
And what’s the only thing more unexpected than dropping an out-of-nowhere trailer for a science-fiction blockbuster no one knew existed? Repeating the trick for an audience that already knows where to look. On January 14th, 2016, Abrams once again attached a Cloverfield trailer to a Michael Bay movie — in this case, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. But this time, the title was the star of the show.
The brilliantly cut (and deceptively upbeat) teaser shows life in some sort of underground bunker, as a girl with a brace on her leg (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a boy with a broken arm (John Gallagher Jr.) and a man with a gun strapped to his back (John Goodman) try to kill the time. As Tommy James and the Shondells’ “I Think We’re Alone Now” plays over a jukebox, it soon becomes clear that something sinister is happening. The footage builds to what appears to be an escape attempt as Goodman barks: “Don’t open that door — you’re going to get us all killed!” And then, even more ominously: “Something’s coming.” That’s when the word “Cloverfield” flickers on the screen, a few seconds before the title appears in full: “10 Cloverfield Lane.”