movies and a short manga comic to its name.  So what's the story behind these stories,  

and just how did the franchise come to be? This  is the untold truth of the Cloverfield franchise.

J.J. Abrams has built his career on  echoing genre movies of the past,  

so it probably won't come as a surprise to  find that he thought up Cloverfield as a  

way of paying tribute to classic kaiju movies.  However, the circumstances that informed this  

idea were rooted in a more specific personal  experience — one that made Abrams realize  

the sorry status of American-made monster  movies. In an interview, Abrams explained:

"I got the idea when I went to Japan [...]  and saw all these Godzilla toys in the  

shops. I realised that America hasn't  had a monster movie to call its own,  

not since King Kong all those years ago anyway,  and thought it was time to change that."

From this toy store encounter sprang  a desire that fueled the creation of  

not just the original Cloverfield, but an  entire sprawling franchise. In the process,  

Abrams did indeed create an ultra-intense monster;  

one that was more than capable of standing  up against cinema's biggest beasts.

One of the most evocative aspects of  Cloverfield's marketing campaign was its  

emphasis on the beheading  of the Statue of Liberty.  

The decapitated head closed out the  film's initial teaser trailer with a bang,  

while a headless Lady Liberty featured as the  centerpiece of Cloverfield's poster. By lingering  

on this image, Cloverfield instantly crafted an  aura of fear and dread around its plot. Obviously,  

the Statue of Liberty is something Americans  assume will always stand in New York City. When  

that gets threatened by an unknown menace — well,  that's bound to send a chill up anyone's spine.

Lady Liberty's decapitation was  actually inspired by the marketing  

materials for a classic 1980s action movie.  As Cloverfield director Matt Reeves told IGN:

"The inspiration came from the  poster of Escape from New York.  

The poster had an image on it of the head  of the Statue of Liberty and that image was  

nowhere in the movie! And it's  an incredibly provocative image."

The title for the original Cloverfield didn't  just spring up out of thin air. In fact,  

the project went under several working  titles before settling on its final moniker.  

During production, Cloverfield was known  by a number of different temporary titles,  

including "Slusho," "Chocolate  Outrage," and "Cheese."

Even as the movie's release date approached,  Cloverfield had no title to speak of, with  

the teaser trailer only promising a release date.  It was later reported that the film might end up  

going by the name Wreck. As it turned out, this  all helped to keep the first Cloverfield movie  

cloaked under a veil of secrecy. The project's  marketing was defined by its cryptic nature,  

and all that constant speculation over  the title helped keep up that reputation.

Cloverfield's second trailer, in November  2007, would eventually give the movie its name,  

while the movie's follow-ups would further  turn Cloverfield into a full-blown brand.

Monster movies tend to function as much as  sociopolitical commentary as they do opportunities  

to watch huge beasts topple buildings. Just look  at the 1954 movie Godzilla, which is a clear  

reflection on Japan's nuclear anxiety. In the  case of Cloverfield, director Matt Reeves had a  

very specific idea of what this particular monster  movie, captured through the lens of found footage,  

was meant to say about the time in which it  was released. Reeves told Shock Till You Drop:

"Cloverfield very much speaks to the fear and  anxieties of our time, how we live our lives.  

Constantly documenting things  and putting them up on YouTube,  

sending people videos through email — we felt it  was very applicable to the way people feel now."

Reeves also observed how one moment,  

in which the lead movie's protagonists encounter  another person filming everything, was meant to  

remind people that there was more happening in  the wider world of Cloverfield. He continued:

"Media is so much an aspect of our lives today  that even evoking that idea was exciting to us.  

That there could be different stories out there."

"You still filming?" "Yeah. People are gonna wanna know  

how it all went down."

While the beast itself was absent from the  vast majority of the marketing for Cloverfield,  

the film itself does eventually feature  the creature that has come to be dubbed  

Clover. In the film, Clover only enjoys a  fleeting on-screen presence, with the brevity  

of its appearances meant to heighten the sense of  fear and uncertainty felt by both the characters  

and the audience. Despite its minimal screen  time, though, a whole lot of care went into this  

creature — particularly in figuring out which  real-world animals would come to inspire it.

The primary element emphasized in the monster's  behavior was terror. Rather than maliciously  

choosing to rampage across New York City,  Clover was designed to evoke wild animals,  

such as elephants or horses, that have  become terrified and begun to run amok.  

This lent an extra sense of unpredictability to  Clover and its actions. There was no evil plan  

driving it, nor any complex motivation behind  all that chaos. Clover was simply engaging in  

random fits of destruction because,  above all else, it was frightened.

On a visual level, underwater creatures  such as piranhas were channeled into the  

design of the monster's face — a nod to  how Clover is an extraterrestrial being  

that crash landed in Earth's oceans.

Before he won an Oscar for Best Director for  his work on La La Land, and even prior to  

directing Whiplash, Damien Chazelle was just  another artist looking for his big break.  

At one point, that break looked like it might  come from Bad Robot Productions. J.J. Abrams and  

company enlisted Chazelle to write and direct  the original version of 10 Cloverfield Lane,  

then titled Valencia. Abrams  later told Empire magazine:

"Actually, [Damien Chazelle] was  originally coming on as a director  

as well, and he was working on  the script to direct. [...] He  

did incredible work with [aspects of]  plot and character with his draft."

The eventual director of 10 Cloverfield Lane,  Dan Trachtenberg, had nothing but positive  

things to say about the feature's original  filmmaker. He later told The Q&A Podcast:

"I have so many things to thank him for. [Because  he made Whiplash,] I got a chance to make a movie,  

and he did a great job with the script.  He really gifted me with so many things."

When 10 Cloverfield Lane was in production,  its cast and crew knew it only as Valencia,  

a low-budget thriller hailing from Bad Robot  Productions. However, as production went on,  

something changed. Before long, Valencia had  become a spiritual sequel to Cloverfield,  

and the title was altered to 10 Cloverfield Lane.

"Crazy is building your ark after  the flood has already come!"

Rather than being the result of some brilliant  plan kept secret by everyone involved in the film,  

however, attaching this project to the name  Cloverfield was actually a last-minute switch.  

Speaking to MovieWeb about how this change  came about, director Dan Trachtenberg said:

"We wrote an original screenplay. Cloverfield  was not in our mind at the time. During the  

development process, the idea came up  that it could be in the Clover-verse.  

We were a bit surprised initially, but now when  you see the movie; it makes a lot of sense in  

terms of tone, twists, turns, and the thriller  aspect. It was definitely the right decision."

By attaching the Cloverfield name to  10 Cloverfield Lane, this new thriller  

was able to stand out more easily in a crowded  marketplace. Moreover, following up Cloverfield  

with an otherwise standalone project allowed  the film to function as a mostly separate  

narrative — rather than simply supporting itself  on Cloverfield plot points and shout-outs.

For years after the original  Cloverfield was released,  

news would occasionally come to light suggesting  that a direct follow-up was in development.  

Just a few weeks after the original debuted,  director Matt Reeves even told Rotten Tomatoes  

that they were considering a number of active  concepts as to where a follow-up might go.

However, the busy schedules of all those  involved in the first Cloverfield — and  

particularly J.J. Abrams — was constantly cited  as a reason why the project wasn't moving forward.  

With the release of 10 Cloverfield Lane,  Abrams finally had a chance to reveal why  

audiences hadn't seen another movie set in  the world of Cloverfield. He told Fandango:

"We had so much fun making  Cloverfield that when we were done,  

we felt like we were done with that  movie. And there were a lot of ideas [for  

a follow-up] [...] A lot of things were thrown  around. But we now live in that post-Godzilla,  

post-Pacific Rim era, where those movies  have been made. So what would we do?"

With this in mind, Abrams and company  opted instead to pursue a more spiritual  

sequel to the first movie — and  10 Cloverfield Lane was born.

Much like 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Cloverfield  Paradox wasn't always meant to be a part of the  

Cloverfield franchise. Originally, it  was just a standalone science fiction  

movie called The God Particle. However,  according to the film's writer Oren Uziel,  

it wasn't long before it became attached to an  already existing franchise. Uziel told Collider:

"[The Cloverfield Paradox] was written before  

10 Cloverfield Lane and the expanded Cloverfield  universe even existed as a thing. [...] I don't  

know exactly when it became a Cloverfield  movie. [...] I think everyone just knew,  

if it fits — and it does — into that Cloverfield  world, it should, and it can only help."

Uziel emphasized that it's not easy marketing  an original movie of any kind these days,  

and that The God Particle's association with the  

Cloverfield name likely gave it  a fighting chance at survival.

In its long journey to release, The Cloverfield  Paradox went through a series of reshoots that  

were initially shrouded in as much secrecy as  anything else in the movie. However, once the  

project was officially released on Netflix, more  details emerged about what those reshoots had  

entailed. Apparently, they had been focused on  adding a new Earth-bound subplot to the movie.

During a Facebook Q&A session, J.J Abrams  noted that scenes in The Cloverfield  

Paradox following Michael Hamilton as he navigates  the situation on Earth were not originally part of  

the script. They were added during these reshoots  at the behest of test screening audiences,  

who were curious about what was happening on the  ground during the events of the main story, which  

takes place in space. This subplot also helped set  up the infamous ending of The Cloverfield Paradox,  

which explicitly connects the feature to the  original Cloverfield with a certain special cameo.

Clover appears and roars

Today, A Quiet Place is its own mega-franchise,  one with a widely recognizable brand name that  

can generate sizable box office  returns with very little effort.  

But once upon a time, the first Quiet Place  was just another original horror movie.  

Not only that, but there was once a moment  where it even looked like it would even be  

folded into the Cloverfield franchise.  Screenwriter Scott Beck told IndieWire:

"I guess it crossed our mind, and we had  spoken to our representatives about that  

possibility. [...] We were actually talking to  an executive [at Paramount] about this film,  

and it felt from pitch form  that there might be crossover."

Luckily, Paramount had  other ideas. Beck continued:

"But when we finally took the final script  in to Paramount, they saw it as a totally  

different movie [...] I think in part because  conceptually it was able to stand on its own."

Given his affinity for original storytelling,  Beck was understandably relieved when Paramount  

allowed A Quiet Place to stand on its own  two legs. And of course, in an ironic twist,  

the finished movie became so popular  that it spawned a whole new franchise;  

one entirely distinct from the Cloverfield  name… and arguably more successful, too.

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