Could Cloverfield 3 Have a Surprise Netflix Premiere?

UPDATE: A post from the Korean Classification Board lists a Daniel Brühl-starring Bad Robot production submitted by Netflix, adding fuel to the theory the film will premiere on the streaming service.

The Cloverfield franchise is seen as a drastic departure from the traditional movie marketing and release patters traditionally expected with most Hollywood productions. From surprise trailers to special title reveals and viral marketing campaigns, producer J.J. Abrams has helped ensure that the lead up to any Cloverfield movie (at least in the few installments we've had so far) can be just as exciting for some fans as the movie itself. The movie formerly known as God Particle, AKA Cloverfield 3 (potentially Cloverfield Station) is no exception, and may even raise that bar, especially with news that it might come to Netflix.

The mystery of the "Cloververse" started with Cloverfield when its first teaser trailer came attached to Transformers on July 3, 2007, surprising audiences by not even providing a title, simply dropping the release date, January 18, 2008, at the end of the trailer. The title would be provided in a second trailer, followed by an interactive Alternate Reality Game including a number of viral marketing sites, such as www.tagruato.jp, or the creation of MySpace pages for each of the film's main characters.

Rumors of a Cloverfield sequel swirled for years, but fans would once again be surprised on January 15, 2016, when a mysterious trailer for a movie starring John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead attached to 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi ended with a title card for 10 Cloverfield Lane - a movie that would release less than 2 months later. Shortly after this, the tagruato.jp ARG site was updated again and started to feed clues to fans about the backstory for some of the new characters.

Cloverfield poster and Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane

Now, the next Cloververse installment, the movie previously titled God Particle, has officially started its own ARG campaign, with tagruato.jp once again loading fresh clues, but there's still no news about the movie's official title and no trailer in sight. Could Paramount and J.J. Abrams again be planning something special for this new Cloverfield movie?

God Particle was originally supposed to release in February 2017, but it was first delayed to October 2017, then again to February 2018, and then finally to the date it holds currently, April 20th, 2018. During this transition, it also lost the God Particle title and is now referred to as Untitled Cloverfield Sequel, although a recent discovery suggests the actual title could be Cloverfield Station.

The newest development in this tangled web of the Cloververse is the news that Paramount is in talks with Netflix to sell off God Particle/Cloverfield 3/Untitled Cloverfield Sequel/Cloverfield Station, indicating the movie may still have a few unexpected twists up its sleeve.

Following the surprise trailer and title reveals of its predecessors, the Untitled Cloverfield Sequel will be looking to continue to take that trend to the next level, and what's more surprising than an unexpected trailer and title reveal, but a surprise Netflix premiere? In fact, the movie could potentially still make its original February 2nd release date (or maybe that was the plan all along?), with Netflix users suddenly seeing Cloverfield Station show up on their Netflix front page.

After all, for both Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, the ARG started after the trailer and title reveals, yet this time around it's already live months ahead of its expected release date before the trailer or title are known. If the release date truly stays April 20th, then the ARG is going to be much longer than it was for 10 Cloverfield Lane, although the original ARG for Cloverfield stretched a few months, so it could be more in line with that.

Until the ARG provides enough clues, a trailer drops, or some other official announcement comes out, it won't be clear exactly what is going on with this movie, and even if it goes to Netflix, a number of things could happen, but it's undeniable that having the movie's official title announcement be the actual movie showing up Netflix unannounced would be a very "Cloverfield" thing to happen.

NEXT: Cloverfield 3 Plot Involves a ‘Near Future Scenario’