So…Overlord ISN’T the Next Cloverfield Movie, and I Don’t Know What the Hell’s Going On

I was genuinely looking forward to seeing how the hell zombie Nazis during WWII would fit into the Cloverfield universe. Sadly, they don’t. Or maybe they don’t anymore. Either way, the upcoming Paramount/Bad Robot film Overlord isn’t a Cloverfield movie, which means that no one will care about my headcanon zombie/alien time travel shenanigans but me.

At CinemaCon yesterday, J.J. Abrams was on hand (via video) to introduce a work-in-progress clip from the upcoming film. During his intro, he just sort of threw in the fact that “It’s not a Cloverfield movie.” He then said that even though Overlord isn’t Cloverfield 4, that one “is in the works for theaters.” He gave no other details on that.

Now, I wasn’t exactly The Cloverfield Paradox‘s biggest fan, but I love the idea of the Cloverfield franchise: tying a bunch of B-movies together into a loose universe. Overlord being one of those would’ve been a huge stretch, no doubt, but I was looking forward to seeing how creative the could get in tying it to the other three films. Alas, it is not to be.

At least, that’s what J.J. Abrams says. And as we all know he, like the Doctor, lies. Also, the poster on the film’s IMDb page still freaking looks like this:

image: Paramount

I mean COME ON…

image: Netflix

I don’t know what the hell is going on. Overlord is probably the fifth film in a franchise we haven’t even heard of, because J.J. Abrams’ grandkids haven’t come through the time vortex to tell us about it yet.

In any case, Overlord is directed by Julius Avery, with a screenplay by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith. And I never thought about this before, but Overlord will actually be Bad Robot’s first R-rated film, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of R-rated film they’re willing to put their name on after years of PG-13 genre stories and family-friendly franchises.

As reported by Deadline Hollywood, the footage Abrams introduced from the film at CinemaCon followed American paratroopers the night before D-Day who are dropped behind enemy lines to carry out an important mission, only to realize there’s more going on in this Nazi-occupied village than meets the eye:

““You are about to embark upon a great crusade. You will bring about the destruction of the German army. The eyes of the world are upon you,” a narrator says as the video opens with a shot of the paratroopers on a plane. Cut to a montage of jump-scare images including a French-speaking disembodied head.”

The film stars Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Jacob Anderson, Pilou Asbaek, Iain De Caestecker, John Magaro and Bokeem Woodbine, and is set to arrive in theaters October 26th.

Will you be checking it out?

(featured image: Netflix)

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