Right now, Paramount isn't answering any questions about this, and they've bought themselves at least 12 hours of social media buzz before they're expected to start making official comments.
Now, here's the rub… there's no guarantee that this is in fact a sequel to Cloverfield. All we know is that the title refers to the same street name that was the reason for the original monster movie's title. What if this is a new running joke in these surprise mystery box movies that Abrams produces at Bad Robot? What if this is exactly the small-scale psychological thriller that Valencia was rumored to be and not another giant monster movie at all? Would that be too confusing? Would that just be a playful way for Abrams to connect his work?
As several people have already remarked to me, maybe Cloverfield is just the overall name that will tie together a series of otherwise unrelated fun SF thrillers, like Bad Robot's Twilight Zone. It's fun looking at the insane amount of confusion online about what this trailer is right now, because it won't last too long. And no matter what now, the answer will bum some people out. But for a moment, the mystery box sneak attack worked and people had that momentary feeling of "I have no idea what is going on," and that's pretty cool.
UPDATED: Paramount sent along the following clarification from JJ Abrams about the film:
“The idea came up a long time ago during production. 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.”
UPDATED #2:
Someone attended a test screening of the film chimed in with this clarification, which seems to confirm that this is not a direct sequel:
Read more at
http://www.hitfix.com/motion-captur...-cloverfield-lane-trailer#h2bAWBEIO7fIVQGP.99
