Cloverfield

Cloverfield Films
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{{{name}}} Directed by Matt Reeves Producer J.J. Abrams & Bryan Bark Written by Drew Goddard Music by Michael Giacchino (End credits) Distributor Paramount Pictures Rating PG-13 Budget $25,000,000 Box office $170,764,026 Running time 84 minutes

• For the monster, see Clover.

Cloverfield is a 2008 American monster movie directed by Matt Reeves and produced by J. J. Abrams. The film was first publicized as a teaser trailer during screenings of Transformers; however, the trailers never listed the title of the movie and only provided its release date, "01.18.08". Paramount Pictures carried out a large viral marketing campaign in order to promote the film prior to its theatrical release. Cloverfield was finally released on January 17, 2008, in New Zealand and Australia, on January 18 in North America, and on February 1 in the United Kingdom. Cloverfieldopened in 3,411 theaters and grossed $16,930,000 on its opening day in the U.S. and Canada. It made 40.1 million on its opening weekend which at the time was the most successful January release of its time. Worldwide, the film made $170,602,318.

Plot

Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city. Told from the point of view of their video camera, the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal, horrifying event of their lives.

Cast

• Michael Stahl-David as Robert Hawkins
• Mike Vogel as Jason Hawkins
• Odette Yustman as Beth McIntyre
• Lizzy Caplan as Marlena Diamond
• Jessica Lucas as Lily Ford
• T. J. Miller as Hudson Platt

To prevent the leaking of plot information, instead of auditioning the actors with scenes from the film, scripts from Abrams's previous productions were used, such as television series Alias. Some scenes were also written specifically for the audition process, not intended for use in the film. Despite not being told the premise of the film, Lizzy Caplan stated that she accepted a role in Cloverfield solely because she was a fan of the Abrams-produced television series Lost, and her experience of discovering its true nature initially caused her to state that she would not sign on for a film in the future "without knowing full well what it is." She indicated that her character was a sarcastic outsider, and that her role was "physically demanding."

Production

J. J Abrams conceived of a new monster after he and his son visited a toy store in Japan. He explained, "We saw all these Godzilla toys, and I thought, we need our own monster, and not King Kong, King Kong's adorable. I wanted something that was just insane and intense. In February 2007, Paramount Pictures secretly greenlit Cloverfield, to be produced by Abrams, directed by Matt Reeves, and written by Drew Goddard. The project was produced by Abrams' company, Bad Robot Productions. The poster for Escape from New York (1981) inspired the scene of the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty in Cloverfield.

The casting process was carried out in secret, with no script being sent out to candidates. With production estimated to have a budget of $30 million, filming began in mid-June in New York. One cast member indicated that the film would look like it cost $150 million, despite producers not casting recognizable and expensive actors. Location filming, shot in digital video using hand-held video cameras, took place on Coney Island, with scenes being shot at Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park and the B&B Carousel. Some interior shots were filmed on a soundstage at Downey, California. The film was edited to look like it was filmed with one hand-held camera, including jump cuts similar to ones found in home movies. Director Matt Reeves described the presentation, "We wanted this to be as if someone found a Handicam, took out the tape and put it in the player to watch it. What you're watching is a home movie that then turns into something else." Reeves explained that the pedestrians documenting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty with the camera phones was reflective of the contemporary period. "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 e-mail - we felt it was very applicable to the way people feel now," the director said.

The decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty was inspired by the poster of the 1981 film Escape from New York, which had shown the head lying in the streets in New York despite not appearing in the film itself. According to Reeves, "It's an incredibly provocative image. And that was the source that inspired [producer] J.J. [Abrams] to say, 'Now this would be an interesting idea for a movie.

The film was titled Cloverfield from the beginning, but the title changed throughout production before it was finalized as the original title. Matt Reeves explained that the title was changed frequently due to the hype caused by the teaser trailer, "That excitement spread to such a degree that we suddenly couldn't use the name anymore. So we started using all these names like Slusho and Cheese. And people always found out what we were doing!" The director said that "Cloverfield" was the government's case designate for the monster, comparing the titling to that of the Manhattan Project. "And it's not a project per se. It's the way that this case has been designated. That's why that is on the trailer, and it becomes clearer in the film. It's how they refer to this phenomenon [or] this case," said the director.

Visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett and his company Tippett Studio were enlisted to develop the visual effects for Cloverfield. Since the visual effects were incorporated after filming, cast members had to react to a non-existent creature during scenes, only being familiar with early conceptual renderings of the beast.

Gallery

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  An explosion by Downtown New York

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  Clover's tail smashes the Brooklyn Brigde

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  The military fighting the monster

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  Clover Parasite

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• Clovermonster.jpg
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Sequel

Following Cloverfield's release, director Matt Reeves was asked about the possibility of a sequel, and stated that he was open to producing one. In subsequent interviews, Reeves and J.J. Abrams both entertained the idea of a sequel to Cloverfield, stating that they had set up an entire backstory for the film that they would like to explore in a sequel. Despite these two's enthusiasm, nothing surfaced about a Cloverfield sequel for several years.

On January 15, 2016, Paramount Pictures released a teaser trailer for a film entitled 10 Cloverfield Lane, being produced by the studio and Abrams' production company Bad Robot. The film was released theatrically on March 11, 2016. Though not a direct sequel to Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane is described as a "spiritual successor" to the film and serves as the second entry in an anthology begun with Cloverfield.

Video Releases

Paramount DVD/Blu-ray (2008)

• Region: 1 (DVD) or N/A (Blu-ray)
• Discs: 1
• Audio: English (5.1 Surround), French (5.1 Surround), Spanish (5.1 Surround)
• Special Features: Audio commentary by Matt Reeves, Special Investigation Mode which provides additional details as the movie plays (Blu-ray only), Document 01.18.08: The Making of 'Cloverfield' featurette (28 minutes), Cloverfield Visual Effects featurette (22 minutes), I Saw It! It's Alive! It's Huge! featurette on Clover's design (6 minutes), outtakes (4 minutes), deleted scenes (3 minutes), alternate endings (3 minutes), viral marketing materials, pre-viz of the tunnel attack
• Notes: Cloverfield DVDs sold at Best Buy contained a second disc with the featurette T.J. Miller's Video Diary (25 minutes). One release of the Blu-ray is packaged with King Kong (1933), Jack the Giant Slayer, and 10,000 BC.

Videos

Cloverfield Trailer Cloverfield Trailer 2

External links

• Script dated 6/8/07
• Production notes
• All text from the Blu-ray's Special Investigation Mode
• Tagruato viral site
• Missing Teddy Hanssen viral site
• Slusho viral site
• T.I.D.O. Wave viral site
• Jamie and Teddy viral site (password is “jllovesth”)
• List of firearms used in the film

References

This is a list of references for Cloverfield. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: ^[1]