‘Cloverfield’ Fan Film ‘Megan’ Centers On A Never-Before-Seen Character
Paramount and Bad Robot’sCloverfieldfranchise took a dive in quality with this year’sThe Cloverfield Paradox, but the franchise isn’t dead yet. We still don’t know with certainty whether this year’sWWII sci-fi thrillerOverlordtakes place in theCloverfielduniverse, and producerJ.J. Abramshas promised thata “proper” sequel is on the way.
In the meantime, though, a group of Hollywood filmmakers – VFX artists, cinematographers, writers, producers, and actors – have banded together to make aCloverfieldfan film set in that universe that focuses on a character that was referenced in the10 Cloverfield LaneARG campaign: Megan Stambler, the daughter of John Goodman’s character. Check out the short film, entitledMegan, below.
Cloverfield Fan Film
Megan, which is described as “a tribute to Bad Robot’s Cloverfield Universe,” seems to be a passion project for many of the people who worked onIndependence Day: Resurgence.MegandirectorGreg Straszworked onResurgence’s visual effects (he also has credits on films likeWhite House DownandIt Follows), writer/producerGiuseppe Mercadantealso worked onResurgence’sVFX, and cinematographerMarkus Fördererserved as Megan’s director of photography. Writer/producerJean de Meuronseems to be one of the few creatives here who doesn’t have any association withResurgence. The VFX companyGradient Effectsis behind the visual effects forMegan, but they also helped produce and finance the project.Matilda Lutz(Rings, Revenge) stars as the title character, the daughter of Goodman’s Howard Stambler, who worked as a telemetry analyst for Bold Futura, a subsidiary of a company called Tagruato that has played a significant role in all of theCloverfieldmovie marketing campaigns. You canread much more about her character here.
The most obvious easter egg is that Megan clearly drinks a Slusho! beverage on the helicopter before it crashes. Slusho!, of course, is a fictional brand that has appeared in tons of Bad Robot productions; Rob, the main character in the firstCloverfield, was moving from New York to Tokyo in order to work for that company.
But the final shot includes another reference. In the super wide shot of the alien spacecraft hovering over the city, you can see smaller spacecraft floating underneath the mother ship. A ship that size was seen at the very end of10 Cloverfield Lane, afterMary Elizabeth Winstead’s Michelle finally breaks out of her underground prison.
Meganis being framed as a proof of concept video, so we’ll have to see if Abrams and the Bad Robot team like this enough to invite these filmmakers in for a meeting. TheCloverfieldfranchise has always been unconventional, so the next movie being greenlit from a short film would not be remotely surprising to me.
