Remember Cloverfield? J.J. Abrams’s Godzilla? (As opposed to his Star Wars, his Star Trek, his Mission: Impossible, or his Close Encounters of the Third Kind.) That movie appeared out of nowhere with a mysterious, untitled trailer featuring the Statue of Liberty getting her block knocked off, ruining what seemed like an otherwise totally bitchin’ party. People went nuts! With very little to work with, people speculated that this was an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation (which would’ve been awesome), a Lost movie (nope), a Voltron movie (lol), or a new Godzilla. Everyone was wrong, except the people who said it was a new Godzilla, which was pretty much true. But the mysterious, viral rollout for Cloverfield was a massive success.
So it’s no surprise that Abrams and Co. are doing the exact same thing with the film’s sequel, 10 Cloverfield Lane. (Abrams is resisting the “sequel” moniker. He told Collider that the film is a “blood relative” of Cloverfield’s.) 10 Cloverfield Lane, which stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman and the underground bunker in which they live, was kept under wraps and filmed with the codename Valencia. The trailer, which you can watch below, premiered last night—it’s airing before Michael Bay’s Benghazi-thriller Beard Team Six. Abrams is back in the producer chair, though Matt Reeves, who directed the first Cloverfield is presumably too busy with Planet of the Apes—newcomer Dan Trachtenberg is at the helm for 10 Cloverfield Lane.