The writers of A Quiet Place have revealed they briefly thought about making it a Cloverfield movie. Thanks to its innovative marketing campaign the original Cloverfield proved to be a sleeper hit back in 2008, but despite leaving a few narrative threads open a direct sequel never happened. Instead, producer J.J. Abrams took an unrelated movie called The Cellar that worked on its own as a great thriller and decided to shoot new footage to make it a spiritual sequel dubbed 10 Cloverfield Lane.
The movie proved to be another hit, so Abrams production company Bad Robot did the same thing with a movie called The God Particle and renamed it The Cloverfield Paradox. The movie was delayed multiple times, however, with Paramount later admitting they were concerned about the movie's commerical prospects. Instead, they struck a deal with Netflix that saw the movie suddenly land on the streaming platform. While the reviews were mixed, the deal appears to have paid off for both Netflix and Paramount.
Related: A Quiet Place Would Have Been A Better Cloverfield Movie Than Paradox
Some fans thought A Quiet Place may also be a Cloverfield movie in disguise, and believed the creatures featured in the trailer were the same aliens from the previous movies; director and star John Krasinski also left The Cloverfield Paradox to make the movie. That's since been proven to not be the case, but writers Bryan Woods and Scott Beck have revealed in a new interview with Slashfilm that the idea of making it a Cloverfield sequel briefly crossed their minds:
Scott: That was one of those things that, I guess it crossed our mind and we had spoken to our representatives about that possibility. It was weird timing, though, because when we were writing the script, 10 Cloverfield Lane was at Paramount. We were actually talking to an executive there about this film, and it felt from pitch form that there might be crossover, but when we finally took the final script in to Paramount, they saw it as a totally different movie. What was really incredible about the process that we feel very grateful for is the studio embraced this weird movie with no dialogue with open arms. They never thought about branding it as a Cloverfield film, I think in part because conceptually it was able to stand on its own.
Bryan: And our biggest fear was – we love Bad Robot, we love the people over there, and obviously J.J. [Abrams] is certainly a hero to us – but one of our biggest fears was this getting swept up into some kind of franchise or repurposed for something like that. The reason I say ‘biggest fear’ – we love the Cloverfield movies. They’re excellent. It’s just that as filmgoers, we crave new and original ideas.
Based on the reviews that have greeted A Quiet Place so far, it seems Paramount made the right call. The mission statement of the Cloverfield sequels is to take original concepts and loosely tie them to an overall mythology, but fans would probably admit the Cloverfield links were the weakest parts of both follow-ups. The finale of Lane feels like it belongs in a completely different movie, and the monster cameo in Paradox feels pasted on.
Thats one of the reasons Beck and Woods are probably glad A Quiet Place was allowed to standalone. Fans won't have to wait too long for the next Cloverfield movie, with Overlord arriving October 2018. The movie is set during World War II and follows American soldiers who run across a supernatural Nazi experiment. J.J. Abrams recently dubbed it a "crazy movie," and it will be interesting to see the new marketing gimmicks Bad Robot comes up with for it.
More: Cloverfield 4 Is "A Crazy Movie," Says Abrams
Source: Slashfilm
