It Follows director David Robert Mitchell’s 80s-set “IMAX thrill-ride” for Bad Robot is shrouded in secrecy. So could Flowervale Street be another Cloverfield spin-off? We look at the possible clues.
We’ve been following the slightly under-the-radar progress of Flowervale Street for some time now. An upcoming film from It Follows and Under The Silver Lake director David Robert Mitchell, it has been shrouded in secrecy for several months, with even that title currently in question.
As more details about the project have emerged, though, we’ve began to wonder: could it be another film in the Cloverfield series? If so, this would place it in a series that has so far included the 2008 original and the spin-offs 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018).
Let’s take a quick look at the clues we currently have to hand.
Described as a “thrill-ride” shot with IMAX cameras on a budget of about $80m, Flowervale Street is being made under the banner of JJ Abrams’ production company Bad Robot – the same firm that made all those Cloverfield films. JJ Abrams is listed as the producer on Mitchell’s film, as he was on the other entries in the Cloverfield series.
Exactly what Flowervale Street is remains a currently a closely guarded secret; it’s said that the film will be set in the 1980s, and will be about two parents searching for their missing children. Anne Hathaway was cast in the role of a currently unnamed mother first, while more recently it was reported that Ewan McGregor would be joining the film as the father.
For several months, it was rumoured that Flowervale Street would feature dinosaurs in some way, which rather blew a hole in our pet theory that it might be tied up with the Cloverfield series (which feature monsters, but not prehistoric lizards).
In a recent interview with Collider, however, McGregor not only confirmed that he was starring with Anne Hathaway in the film, and that the pair are “both parents”, but he also let slip that the dinosaur rumour was incorrect.
Here’s the full quote:
“Well, I don’t know where they’re getting dinosaurs from. That may or may not be the case. But no, I like [David Robert] very much, this film director, and I like very much the idea of working with Anne Hathaway. I’ve got a feeling that I think the two of us as parents will be… Yeah, I’m trying not to say anything. I’ve spoiled that part. We’re both parents. It’s gonna be fun, I think. It’s difficult to say more about it without saying anything about it. I think you’ve got to take everything with a pinch of salt that you read online at the moment, you know what I mean?”
McGregor, evidently, is under strict instructions not to divulge too much about even the basics of the film’s plot. It certainly echoes the huge levels of obscurity that surrounded Cloverfield before its release in 2008, with the project greenlit and cast in secret. Actors auditioned for the movie without access to the script, and were often given scenes to rehearse with that weren’t in the finished screenplay.
Could Flowervale Street be a similarly secretive Cloverfield film? Its title certainly has echoes of the word Cloverfield, and Bad Robot has form when it comes to only revealing that one of its films is connected to the Cloverfield universe at the last minute. And if it’s correct that Flowervale Street is set in the 1980s, this would neatly bookend the Cloverfield films we’ve seen so far, with Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane taking place in the present, The Cloverfield Paradox being set in 2028, and Mitchell’s film serving as a prequel.
Of course, there’s an awful lot of speculation mixed in here, and the theory could be completely wrong. We do know there’s a direct sequel to Cloverfield 2 in the works, with Babak Anvari (Under The Shadow, I Came By) directing from a script by Joe Barton. A viral website once used to market the original Cloverfield all those years ago – for a mythical drink named Slusho – went live in May 2023, so there’s clearly something afoot.
Whatever Mitchell’s making for Bad Robot, it’s said to be going into production in March, so it’s likely we’ll here more about Flowervale Street soon.
