20 facts you might not know about 'Cloverfield'

Abrams was in Japan promoting Mission: Impossible III, which he directed. He saw Godzilla toys all over the place. He decided he wanted to create an American monster who could rival Godzilla. Abrams specifically wanted a character that was “insane” and “intense.”

Abrams loves a mystery, and he found kindred spirits at Paramount. After Abrams pitched the idea, Paramount greenlit it secretly so the film could be a surprise. Abrams would only be on board as a producer, though a hands-on one.

As the producer and progenitor of the idea for Cloverfield, Abrams got to decide who would be working on the film with him. For the script, he turned to Drew Goddard. Goddard had not written a movie, but Abrams was well-versed in his work. The writer had been on the staff for Alias and Lost, two shows helmed by Abrams.

In 1996, Matt Reeves directed the romantic comedy The Pallbearer, which flopped. It seemed to put him in director jail, as he would not direct another movie until Cloverfield came out in 2008. During the time between movies, he co-created Felicity with Abrams. This opportunity to direct a movie again paid off for Reeves. He later directed the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy and The Batman.

Abrams and his team were dedicated to keeping things secret. Actors who were auditioning were not shown any of the script. Instead, Abrams used scenes from his TV shows for auditioning actors. Lizzy Caplan, for example, agreed to be in the film because she was a fan of Lost.

British artist Neville Page was tasked with designing the monster at the center of Cloverfield. Page made sure he had a biological rationale for everything in his design, though much of it didn’t get seen in the film. Additionally, in Page’s mind, the monster was actually the child version of the creature, and the monster was more scared than anything else. As Reeves said, “There's nothing scarier than something huge that's spooked.”

The hook of Cloverfield, beyond the mystery, was how it was shot. This movie was at the forefront of the “shaky cam” style of cinematography. Reeves said, “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.” On top of that, the actor T.J. Miller, who plays the character filming everything in the movie, said that about a third of the final movie was actually shot by him.

The style of Cloverfield, which Roger Ebert dubbed “La Shakily Queasy-Cam,” was not everybody’s cup of tea. Many filmgoers were negatively impacted by the shaky camera work, as migraines and nausea were not unheard of. AMC Theatres went as far as to post warnings in their theaters, and Pacific Theatres issued verbal warnings at the box office.

Perhaps the best-remembered image of Cloverfield involves the severed head of the Statue of Liberty. This is not the first time that image has been seen. They got the idea to include that from the poster for John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, which also featured the head of the Statue of Liberty in the rubble.

Just how dedicated was Abrams to the mystery? The first trailer for Cloverfield wasn’t even really a trailer for Cloverfield. By that, we mean they asked the MPA if they could release the trailer without including the film's title, and they got the go-ahead. The first trailer for Cloverfield arrived without fanfare attached to Transformers, and no title was seen.

Trust the internet to try and parse any mystery out there. After the release of the trailer for Cloverfield, dozens of websites and forum posts hit the internet trying to figure out what the movie was. Even print media got in the mix. The Star-Ledger posited it might be a movie based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, while USA Today suggested it might be a Voltron movie.

Cloverfield was the original title — a name taken from the freeway exit Abrams got off at for his office (yes, it’s that unglamorous). Once that title got out there, it became much more challenging for the production to keep the movie a mystery. As such, alternate titles were considered, such as "Slusho,” “Cheese,” and “Greyshot.” Ultimately, they came back to “Cloverfield."

There were a lot of viral marketing attempts for Cloverfield, much of it surrounding the fictional drink Slusho. On top of that, the marketing team did something very much of the era. Namely, they created fake profiles on MySpace for all the main characters in the film.

Abrams is a longtime admirer of Steven Spielberg, and in many ways, his career is in debt to the legendary director. Spielberg was given a chance to see an early cut of Cloverfield, and he made one suggestion that was integrated into the movie. It was Spielberg’s idea to hint at the monster's fate at the end of the film.

Much like his hero Spielberg and Jaws, Abrams lets the audience’s imagination do most of the work with the monster. The Cloverfield creature is on screen for all of two minutes and 37 seconds throughout the film.

You won’t find a score in Cloverfield due to its found-footage stylings. Indeed, there is no score to the film until the end credits. During the credits, you can hear composer Michael Giacchino’s song “Roar! (Cloverfield Overture”), but that’s the extent of it.

After the credits of Cloverfield, you hear a voice saying, “Help us.” That’s the voice of Reeves. However, if you play it backward, the voice says, “It’s still alive.” That is also the voice of Reeves.

Even with all the hype, Cloverfield was released in January 2008, which is generally seen as a dumping ground for films that studios don’t have much faith in. Hopefully, Paramount believed in Cloverfield because it paid off big time. The movie made $40.1 million domestically, a new January record that lasted until 2014. It raked in $172.4 million worldwide from a $25 million budget.

There was talk of a sequel to Cloverfield from the get-go. Then, in 2016, 10 Cloverfield Lane came out. It’s a very different film, and Abrams has called it a “blood relative” of the original film but not a direct sequel. In 2018, in classic Cloverfield fashion, a trailer came out of nowhere during the Super Bowl to say that The Cloverfield Paradox not only existed but would hit Netflix after the game.

After two pseudo-sequels, a true sequel to Cloverfield is on its way. In 2021, it was announced that Abrams would be producing a sequel that directly follows the events of the 2008 movie, and Joe Barton was hired to write the screenplay.