'God Particle' Is 'Cloverfield 3'

In February, I wrote a post theorizing that the JJ Abrams-produced Julius Onah-directed space station set thriller God Particle might be the third film in a Cloverfield film series. I even asked Abrams this directly, which he slyly responded, "Well, that remains to be seen." Today my prediction has been confirmed: God Particle is Cloverfield 3.

The confirmation comes via The Wrap, who has learned that God Particle will be the third in a series of connected Cloverfield films and confirmed the rumors that Abrams and studio partner Paramount Pictures are quietly developing more movies for the shared universe. We had previously heard that the Cloverfield movies would each be their own stories in the vein of the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror anthology series, but would have some connective tissue.

In February, in response to continuing the Cloverfield series, Abrams said that "there is something else that we'd like to do, and hopefully we'll get a shot." And a shot they have gotten, the movie was filmed secretly on the Paramount lot in August and September 2016.

God Particle is another contained thriller, which like 10 Cloverfield Lane (originally came in as a spec script titled The Cellar) was set up through Bad Robot and Paramount's low-budget division Insurge ($5-10 million films). The film is about a team of American astronauts on a space station who make a terrifying discovery that "challenges all they know about the fabric of reality, even as they desperately fight for their survival."  The movie was scripted by Oren Uziel and stars David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ziyi Zhang, Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Brühl and Chris O'Dowd.

Dan Trachtenberg's contained thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane found a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) waking up from a car accident in the basement of a man (John Goodman) who says he's saved her life from a chemical attack that has left the outside uninhabitable. The film mentions that John Goodman's character Howard Stamble has something to do with satellites, and the 10 Cloverfield Lane Augmented Reality Game connects the two films further, listing  Stambler as the employee of the month on the Bold Futura website.

Bold Futura is one of the subsidiary companies of the Tagruato Corporation introduced during the 2007 Cloverfield viral/ARG, which was working on the "design, manufacture and integration of advanced technology products for the military, arms manufacturers and space exploration organizations." Also, let's not forget the satellite that fell from the sky in the background of the concluding Coney Island scene in Cloverfield.

As part of the 10 Cloverfield Lane viral, an audio file was discovered featuring a mysterious transmission from the International Space Station.

God Particle has been in the works since 2012 and is now set for a February 24th, 2017 release. According to the report, footage from the project is expected to be presented to reporters on Thursday in New York, and on November 2nd in Los Angeles, although a person on the Paramount lot said no announcement would come from the presentations, only footage.