IT'S JUST like Netflix to drop a movie out of nowhere.
A trailer for long-awaited The Cloverfield Paradox aired during the Super Bowl in the US, advertising the new instalment in J.J. Abrams' sci-fi franchise. Only it wasn't like all the other movie trailers that debuted with the promise of a months-away release date.
Netflix gave people about two hours' notice: The Cloverfield Paradox would be available to stream as soon as the Super Bowl was over.
That's right, the long-awaited third Cloverfield movie, which has been in production since 2012, at times under the title The God Particle, is now streaming.
That's got to be a record for the shortest amount of time passing between a trailer debut and the movie's release. And Abrams had already surprised everyone two years ago when 10 Cloverfield Lane, the second in the franchise, popped up out of nowhere a month before release.
The third Cloverfield movie had been dated and then dropped from Paramount's release schedule several times before rumours surfaced last month that Netflix had been in talks to acquire it.
The Cloverfield Paradox is supposed to serve as the missing link between 2008's Cloverfield and 2015's 10 Cloverfield Lane to explain how Earth came to be overrun by alien invaders. In the film, a group of astronauts on a space station working to solve an energy crisis end up fighting for their lives when an experiment in a particle accelerator results in disaster.
The movie was directed by Julius Onah and stars Daniel Bruhl, Elizabeth Debicki, Gug Mbatha-Raw, Zhang Ziyi, Chris O'Dowd and David Oyelowo.
This isn't the first time Netflix has dropped a big title without warning. Previously, the streamer released TV series The OA with no marketing, publicity or announcements that it was in the works.
The Cloverfield Paradox is streaming on Netflix now.
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