Matt Reeves on Cloverfield Sequel: "You are going to see it"

Total Film recently caught up with Matt Reeves and interviewed him about the status of Cloverfield 2:

We asked the Cloverfield and Let Me In director what was going on with Cloverfield 2, and he told us: "Well, you are going to see it - we just don't know when [laughs]."

"At the moment we are talking about the story quite a lot. Drew Goddard, who wrote the original, is going to pen the sequel and JJ Abrams is very much involved.

"However, the three of us have been so busy that getting the right idea together has been taking a long time."

But will the sequel shoot in real-time again? "You see, that's a difficult part: we want it to be shot like the first but how can you continue that idea successfully for a second time?

"We have a lot of affection for the original and the sequel can't just be the same thing. But that is tricky when you need to have a monster destroying stuff once again."

We've heard a similar story before... do you think this sounds like it might actually happen someday?

* thanks to I.V. Kay for sending this in!

JJ Abrams and Matt Reeves Keep Hope Alive for Cloverfield Sequel

In two separate interviews, MTV has tried to get to the bottom of the possibility of a Cloverfield sequel. True to form, neither J.J. Abrams nor Matt Reeves will commit to anything. But here we are over two years later, and they still are not dismissing the idea either. They are keeping with the same story since the movie was released, namely, "we have a few ideas we're kicking around".

Would you still like to see a sequel? Or how about a prequel?

MTV: J.J. Abrams Offers 'Cloverfield' Sequel Update, Ponders Having The 'Star Trek' Sequel 'Go Gorn'

MTV: 'Let Me In' Is 'Darker' Than 'Twilight,' Director Matt Reeves Says

* Thanks to Stéphane and Conor for the updates!

Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves Talks Sequel

Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves still won't commit to the idea of a Cloverfield sequel, but did throw out some interesting possibilities while talking to MTV. One idea was to shoot the sequel in Japan, which is the "source of the inspiration for the [original] film".

Click here to read the article

'Cloverfield' Director Matt Reeves Talks Sequel Dilemma
Published by Josh Horowitz on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 5:05 pm.

Ever since "Cloverfield" came out, it's been taken as a fait accompli that a sequel would be greenlit. So where is it? Catching up with director Matt Reeves, the helmer admits to MTV News in an interview that "the studio of course wants it to happen," but wanting something to happen and coming up with the right idea are two very different things.

Reeves says that talks have been frequent if sporadic over the last nine months. "At times it's gone dormant and then it's come back up again," Reeves says of the brainstorming over a sequel.

"There are a couple ideas that have potential but we haven't quite cracked it yet," says Reeves who is juggling his orginal screenplay, The Invisible Woman and his remake of Let the Right One In among his future projects. Trying to pin down just what those Cloverfield sequel ideas are though is easier said than done. One thought was to return to the source of the inspiration for the film. "When we were in Japan we thought, wouldn't it be cool to do it here," he said.

One things seems certain. Don't expect a traditional sequel picking up right after the first with the same (still living) characters. Rather the filmmakers behind the hit film have discussed a sequel that "wasn't necessarily right after that night but had intersections with the original."

Then there's the possibility that Reeves might not direct the sequel at all. Muck like Danny Boyle did for "28 Weeks Later," Reeves said "There was the thought that maybe we'd bring in some young exciting people and we'd produce their take."

"I don’t know at this point," Reeves said. "I think if we find something that would be incredibly fun to make and that we would want to watch then that's what would push it over the top. It's a weird puzzle."

Matt Reeves: Cloverfield Sequel On Hold

Collider.com has an exclusive interview with Matt Reeves from the Saturn Awards, where Cloverfield won Best Sci-Fi Picture and he picked up The Filmmakers Showcase Award. He was asked repeatably about a Cloverfield sequel, answering that they have some ideas they are tossing around which are only in the baby stages, and unless they can basically "reinvent the wheel", they would rather do something else.

Matt Reeves Interview on Sci Fi Pi

Matt Reeves was interviewed by Sci Fi Pi back in April, just after the Japanese premiere. He doesn't reveal anything new, but does seem to admit not having much involvement with the internet marketing:

Were you involved with Slusho and Tagruato stuff on the internet?
Well the Slusho stuff - there are a lot of really smart young people working at Bad Robot and those guys, we had conversations with them, and they were apprised of the situation and there were a couple of guys that put together some great stuff in particular that was parallel to what was going on. A lot of it was planned, but then they came up with this great crazy stuff.

JJ Abrams on AOTS, Matt Reeves interview

J.J. Abrams appeared on G4's Attack of the Show, and discussed Star Trek, Lost, and Cloverfield. He mentions there is NO connection between Cloverfield and LOST, and there are no definite plans for a sequel yet.

Also, IGN interveiwed Matt Reeves, where he discusses the viral marketing, and mentions there are no definite plans for a sequel yet.

* Thanks to geezyj and Ben Johnson for the heads up.

Cloverfield Radio Interviews

Here is an assortment of Cloverfield related radio interviews from across the country. If you know of anything I am missing, let me know and I'll add it to the list.

Matt Reeves - Adam Carolla Show on FREE FM
Matt Reeves - Kevin & Bean Show on KROQ
Mike Vogel - The Preston & Steve Show on WMMR
TJ Miller & JJ Abrams - Opie & Anthony Show on K-ROCK
JJ Abrams - Howard Stern Show on SIRIUS
JJ Abrams - Lex & Terry on 97.1 The Eagle
JJ Abrams - Bob & Tom on Q95 (You need to be a Bob & Tom member. If you are, please send the MP3 to me!)

Mentioned in the interviews:
• Cloverfield Cast on Fox 5 News
• LA Times Article on Cloverfield

Cloverfield Interviews & Articles

Here are a grip of interviews from the last few days:

Lizzy Caplan - CLOVERFIELD actress Lizzy Caplan and more!
Mike Vogel - Mike Vogel Tries To Keep The Secrets Of Cloverfield
Mike Vogel - Cracking the secrecy of ‘Cloverfield’
JJ Abrams - JJ Abrams Cloverfield Interview
Matt Reeves - Matt Reeves Video Interview, Cloverfield
Brad Grey - Remaking Paramount by the Seat of His Pants

Timeline - JJ's Cloverfield Diary

Peru - El misterio de Cloverfield (La Repúblic)

Matt Reeves Video Interview - Hooman

What day would be complete without a new interview by Matt Reeves? :)

This new video interview is by someone named Hooman, who was apparently in the original trailer wearing the same pink shirt. BTW, nice special effects Hooman!

* Thanks to Ricky!

LAist: Matt Reeves Interview

Los Angeles website LAist has an in-depth interview with Cloverfield's director Matt Reeves, and some great new photos from the set.

Reeves has some interesting comments about Ethan Hass, fans speculation, and true origin of the title Cloverfield.

LAist: Interview: Matt Reeves, Director of Cloverfield

The film has had a very successful viral campaign. What do you think of Ethan Haas and the other people who took it upon themselves to capitalize on it?

All I knew was that we made this teaser trailer and had not given any information about it. People immediately started making connections, some of which connected to things that we were setting up, but others had nothing to do with us.

Some were amazing. ...we wanted to let people know that it was a monster movie in some way without saying, “Hey look! It’s a giant monster movie!” ...

I got up there and said into the mic, “I saw it! It’s alive! It’s huge!” That would be an indication that this thing was alive and huge. Apparently I speak very quickly, so people in the audience heard, “It’s a lion! It’s huge!” I remember coming home from shooting all day and I look online to see what the response has been to the trailer and I’m seeing that people have done a spectral analysis of the audio. They’ve got my voice and they’re playing it slowly. I read further and they’re convinced that I’m saying “It’s a lion!” and that it’s a voltron movie. I didn’t really know anything about voltrons before this, and they’re apparently giant robot lions [see the "leaked footage" parody on the YouTube video].

That kind of stuff started building. Then when there was all this weird Ethan Haas stuff, I remember Bryan and J.J. and I turning to each other and saying, “What is that? We don’t even know what that is.” That’s what happens when you confront people with a mystery. You can’t be surprised if they start making connections that have nothing to do with you. That’s exactly what happened.

When I look at the message boards to see what’s going on, and there will be somebody who has purported to have seen the movie and they’ll give details—very specific details—that have nothing to do with the film. I think, “People are amazing!” It’s fascinating and it’s just something I’ve never really been a part of prior to this. I mean, we had online fans during Felicity, but it was very different.

Tell us the real story behind the title Cloverfield?

When we started the project there was going to be an announcement in the trades. In this case, they wanted to keep everything under wraps. So the movie was going to be made under this outside corporation that was basically a property of Paramount. That corporation had a name that I don’t know the name of. I think Clover was the first part of it. Maybe it was Cloverdale. When Drew [Goddard, LOST writer] was putting a name to the project, there was supposed to be a name for the project like there was for The Manhattan Project. So he said, "I am going to use that weird mysterious thing," and he misheard it. He didn’t even understand that it wasn’t Cloverfield, it was Cloverdale. Maybe that was because of the street by J.J.’s old office, but the truth is he just misunderstood it.

* Thanks to B Met for emailing me about this!

Cloverfield Article on Variety

Variety has an new article about Cloverfield (and some other movie).

Her summary is a little off:

The initial scenes set up the premise: The camera's hunky owner Rob is in love with a beauty named Beth. He doesn't want to shoot a testimonial video at his brother's going-away party, so he passes the camera to a guy named Hud, who keeps shooting through the long night as New York is attacked by something gonzo, loud and very scary. "I saw it, it's alive!" cries one onlooker.

Huh?

However, there is some great new information about how the film was made:

The filmmakers coaxed Paramount into letting them use no-name actors who could improvise, low-key natural night light, herky-jerky HandyCams (as opposed to SteadiCams, which can be artificially jerked around later; "People would smell that in a second," says Reeves), and no musical score at all -- just source music and well-orchestrated ambient sound.

Somehow, with smart advice from "Zodiac" director David Fincher, the filmmakers persuaded the studio to let them blow up digital footage to 35mm; early tests came out looking almost "too good," says Reeves. (The digital "Cloverfield" will screen in a few hundred situations.)

"Cloverfield" thesp T. J. Miller's handling of a lightweight Panasonic HD HandyCam accounts for about an eighth of the final film.

"The little camera establishes a feel -- its grace notes; you see the reflections of the actor holding the camera," says Reeves, who reserved the minicam for intimate scenes among the actors. He kept tweaking those scenes, shooting as many as 60 takes.

The film starts out with the Panasonic, then moves into transitional sequences shot with a 3-lb. Canon for about a third of the film.

For the widescreen scenes with visual effects, which require higher resolution, a cameraman dressed like Hud sports the much-heavier hi-res Sony F23 or Thomson Viper."The cameraman was creating the illusion that huge cameras are very light," says Reeves. "It was grueling. People fell."

The filmmakers seamlessly melded all the shots, including continuous masters with massive effects added by VFX houses and stop-motion master Phil Tippet. One five-minute shot incorporates 20 VFX elements.

"People think you use the 'Blair Witch' aesthetic to avoid seeing things," says Reeves. "I didn't want to have all that anticipation and not reveal him. The fun thing is you do see everything over the course of the movie in several different ways, but it's filmed heavily from one point-of-view. You move quickly. By the end you have intimate contact."

* Thanks to dalphx from Unfiction for finding this!

Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves Interviews

Cloverfield's director Matt Reeves is making the rounds giving interviews around the blogosphere.

Matt Reeves, seen on the left, is probably best know for his work on Felicity with JJ Abrams, seen on the right.



Enjoy some light reading this weekend and check out the following articles.

MTV: ‘Star Trek’ Trailer Boldly Goes To ‘Cloverfield’ Audiences

... “Cloverfield” director Matt Reeves has told MTV News that Paramount has picked his monster flick as the venue to unveil the “Trek” trailer ...

IGN: Exclusive: Cloverfield Director Speaks!

... when the first draft of the script came out it was Cloverfield. It's always been Cloverfield ...

... anyone who has seen the clips from the film knows that "Cloverfield" is the case name that the government has assigned to whatever or whoever is doing all that destruction in New York ... "In the way that the Manhattan Project was the name of that program, that's what this is" ...

"We really wanted to make a movie where essentially, at the end of the day, it's this giant monster movie, ... and do it in this very [realistic] style as if it was found footage. [You] get to know these characters, and in a certain way [we got to] make a character relationship film."

IGN: Exclusive: Cloverfield Director Speaks! Part Two

"The inspiration came from the poster of Escape from New York," says Reeves of that darn head. "The poster had an image on it of the head of the Statue of Liberty and that image was nowhere in the movie! And 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 idea, according to Reeves, is that since this footage has been found and is unedited, every time the camera cuts out indicates a jump forward in time. And in fact, the only cuts in the film are when the camera gets turned off...

... "That's the way that our film is incredibly different from Blair Witch ... So you're going to see the monster, you're going to see huge-scale destruction, you're going to see a lot of crazy stuff!"

ShockTillYouDrop: Cloverfield Director Speaks!

At the last minute, when we were shooting the trailer, we wanted people to know - 'cause we hadn't created the monster yet - that it was a giant monster movie, we wanted a tease of that. I jumped to the microphone and said the line, "I saw it! It's alive! It's huge!" And one of the most amusing things is I had come home and someone on the web had taken that section and started to do an analysis on it and thought I said, "It was a lion."

IESB: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves!

[Slusho is] a connection, obviously, back to a reference to Alias and it's part of the involved connectivity between that and there's a - I don't know what you could call it - a sort of “meta-story” that is part of - almost like an origin story - that is connected.

Is it true ... the date in the film is actually [1-18-08]? No, that's not true. The two ways people referred to the movie where by its codename, Cloverfield, because there was knowledge of that, and just by the date. ... The date is just the date we come out and when everyone gets to see the movie.

AICN: Capone interviews Matt Reeves - Director of CLOVERFIELD!

One of the movies that I saw recently that I thought was applicable, too, in terms of mood was the way CHILDREN OF MEN has those continuous takes. And you get this kind of building dread, and you experience that kind of thrilling, terrifying sense of continuous action that’s going on all around you, and you’re right in the middle of it ... There was something almost Kubrickian about the way it impassively turned; it was very haunting and evocative. But in this case, we knew that it was going to be so point-of-view driven that if the character fell, if the character went through any trauma and he was holding the camera, you were going to see that. ...I think we all felt from the beginning that you would have a particular connection with the person who was filming it, who you would see for very little of the film, ironically.

* Also, don't forget to keep your eye out for TidoWave's upcoming "event"!