Part of the fun of the Cloverfield franchise is that you never know what you’re going to get. The first film used vague teasers and viral marketing to whip the internet into a frenzy while intrigued movie-goers tried to piece together clues about what kind of movie they were about to drag their drunk friends to see at midnight. It turned out to be a found-footage Godzilla-type film, and quite a good one at that.
The sequel, 10 Cloverfield Lane, upped the ante in the mystery department by debuting the trailer for the movie a mere couple of months before it opened in theaters. And then it turned out to be a thriller about end-of-the-world paranoia that mostly took place in a bomb shelter, linked loosely to the first Cloverfield in that both movies take place in the same cinematic universe.
The third, as-yet-untitled movie in the franchise also appears to be loosely linked to the previous films. ComicBook reports that the original script (known at the time as Shimmer Lake) from Oren Uziel was completely divorced from the world of Cloverfield. However, that didn’t last for long! After making some small changes to the script, it easily fit into the canon. And thanks to an interview in Collider with the film’s star, Daniel Brühl, we now know that the movie takes place just slightly ahead of the current time.
“It’s based on many interesting ideas about a near future scenario,” Brühl said, “which is an interesting vision of what could happen or what might happen with the Earth.” He added, “I’ve always wanted to do a space movie, so I couldn’t wait to end up floating in space and solving huge problems.”
So there you have it. The new Cloverfield will take place in the near-future in space. Shedding any more details would see Brühl in his fear of “ending up in a Bad Robot prison,” so that will have to do for now. Fortunately, the movie is slated to open on April 20th, 2018, so we won’t have to wait long to see if giant monsters or a terrifying John Goodman will make an appearance.