In the future all movies will be Cloverfield movies. And thanks to one of those pesky time paradoxes, the future might be right now. On the heels of Netflix’s surprise Super Bowl Sunday release of The Cloverfield Paradox, and reports that October’s supernatural WWII movie Overlord is the fourth film in the franchise, we might be hearing now about a fifth film in development. And if that speculation is correct, it points to just how big the Cloververse will become.
We first came across this news at /Film, who picked it up from the Cloverfield-related webpage for Tagruato, the fictional company from the franchise that also gave us our first viral marketing for Paradox only a few weeks ago. Just like with the third movie, it contains a coded message that “fails” to upload. Fortunately, internet sleuths got to work—again—figuring it out for us.
Reddit user RealJohnGillman translated this new mysterious message, which is a Hebrew newspaper article dated 2007. The message seems to connect directly to Cloverfield producer J.J. Abrams’ developing remake of the 2003 Israeli TV movie All I’ve Got; the film, currently titled Kolma, will star Daisy Ridley in the leading role.
This doesn’t really confirm Kolma as the fifth Cloverfield film, but it’s an easy and obvious connection to make since Bad Robot Productions is responsible for both. The Tagruato site was used to covertly announce a new Cloverfield entry just a couple of weeks ago, but the article’s 2007 dateline doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the premise of Overlord, the supposed next Cloverfield film. Set for a release this October, that movie takes place the night before the Allied D-Day invasion during WWII.
Even considering what we know about the time-hopping Kolma, which is about a woman who is offered the choice between joining her dead husband in the afterlife or going back 50 years to when he died so she can relive her life, the timelines don’t add up… but we’re getting warmer. In addition to the article being in Hebrew, Qumran is an archeological site in the West Bank close to the Dead Sea (which might explain the talk of “scrolls”), which firmly connects to an Israel setting.
So if Kolma really is Cloverfield 5, that means less than a week after The Cloverfield Paradox’s surprise release ad in-universe expansion toward unlimited possibilities, another entry will expand things even more. While Paradox and its multiverse/infinite dimensions made it possible for any Cloverfield movie to go in any direction it wants, Kolma would add yet another dynamic to explore: the afterlife.
If there is one thing that has defined what a Cloverfield movie is, it’s the presence of monsters, hence our reading of hints of a fifth film into this newspaper clipping. If Kolma was only about one women being sent back to Earth, why would the government have to shut down a road for a few weeks? What would they have to hide? Is it possible her return to Earth ripped open a different portal for monsters to travel through?
Connecting this film to the Cloververse is easy, and we already have clues how it might end up being a surprise horror/monster story, but even beyond how its afterlife/supernatural element would add yet another new wrinkle to the possibility for future films, it also points to just how big the Cloverfield franchise might get.
The first Cloverfield was released in 2008, but 10 Cloverfield Lane didn’t come out until 2016. Then it was less than two years before we got the third film, which might be followed up by the fourth film only eight months later, with the fifth film possibly coming out shortly after that. That’s a huge exponential increase in Cloverfield movies.
How many of them do they already have planned that we haven’t unearthed? Is every Bad Robot production possibly a Cloverfield film? Did J.J. Abrams and the rest of the studio realize Paradox gave them incredible creative freedom going forward and decided to start taking advantage of it immediately? Was that why they made it? Either way, Kolma would give them even more freedom to tell any story they want, which is why if it really is Cloverfield 5 it’s the best evidence yet that in the future all movies might be Cloverfield movies. And the future might be now.
What do you think? Do we already know what the fifth film will be? If so, what does it tell us about where the franchise is going? Decode your thoughts on what this all means in our comments below.
Images: Bad Robot Productions
More Clover-stories!
- Read our review of The Cloverfield Paradox
- How The Cloverfield Paradox fits into the Clover-verse
- There are now unlimited possibilities for the Clover-future
