Back in October, an unconfirmed report pegged director Julius Onah’s upcoming film God Particle as the third film in the Cloverfield series, with plenty of secrecy surrounding the J.J. Abrams-produced project in much the same fashion as 2008’s Cloverfield and this year’s 10 Cloverfield Lane. However, a new shift in Paramount Pictures’ release calendar has added another layer of mystery to the project.
In an announcement made this week, the studio reserved the weekend of October 27, 2017, for an untitled “Cloverfield Movie” that will arrive in IMAX theaters. Meanwhile, the studio quietly removed God Particle from its previously announced February 2017 release date, and declined to set a new opening weekend for the film.
So what does all of this schedule-shuffling mean for the Cloverfield series?
Although nothing is confirmed at this point, speculation suggests that Paramount is effectively pushing back the release of the movie currently titled God Particle to the aforementioned October 2017 weekend, while simultaneously staying flexible regarding the film’s final, official title. The first two installments of the loosely connected anthology series each had the world “Cloverfield” in their titles, so there’s reason to believe that if God Particle is indeed the third film in the series, it could have its title tweaked prior to going on the official studio calendar.
Little is known about the plot of God Particle at this point, but the film reportedly follows a group of astronauts aboard an American space station who find themselves in peril after an accident with a particle accelerator. The film is directed by Onah (The Girl is in Trouble) from a script originally penned by 22 Jump Street and Freaks of Nature writer Oren Uziel and later rewritten by Star Trek Beyond co-writer Doug Jung.
The cast of the film includes David Oyelowo (Selma), John Krasinski (The Office), Elizabeth Debicki (The Man From UNCLE), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Concussion), Chris O’Dowd (The IT Crowd), Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and Daniel Bruhl (Captain America: Civil War).
Whatever the case may be, the trailer for the aforementioned, mystery Cloverfield movie is expected to debut with Transformers: The Last Knight in June 2017. Previous films in the series have always had their trailers attached to Michael Bay movies, with the first Cloverfield trailer debuting with Transformers in 2007 and the trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane appearing ahead of Bay’s recent film 13 Hours. In fact, that might be the first time we get some confirmation regarding the project — leaving quite a few months to develop the sort of speculation and rumors that have surrounded each Cloverfield film.
