Cloverfield sequel director Dan Trachtenberg caught Hollywood's eye with Portal: No Escape fan film

Paramount Pictures released the first trailer for a surprise follow-up to 2008's sleeper hit found-footage monster movie Cloverfield earlier today (15 January), revealing that it managed to make the film without knowledge of its existence ever leaking to the press.

Starring John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, 10 Cloverfield Lane looks very different to the cult original (there's no handheld "shakey-cam" footage for a start) and will be directed by Dan Trachtenberg, making his very first feature film.

Trachtenberg's filmography includes an episode of web series BlackBoxTV, short film Kickin' and, most notably, a fan-film called Portal: No Escape, based on the hit games from developer Valve. Released in 2011, the film focuses on the game's lead character Chell as she awakes inside and attempts to escape from a mysterious facility with just a gun that can shoot portals to aid her.

The entire short is available to watch online, and has racked up nearly 17 million views since it was uploaded in August 2011.

The film stars Danielle Rayne and shows the kind of promise that would catch the attention of a major studio like Paramount Pictures (the amount of views surely helped as well), especially when Chell starts to use the iconic portal gun in inventive ways.

In 2013 Trachtenberg was attached to a big screen adaptation of comic series Y: The Last Man, with studio New Line snapping him up after being impressed by his work on Portal: No Escape. 10 Cloverfield Lane is certainly a bit of a step-up, but it's cool that fan-made films uploaded to YouTube can be a pathway to Hollywood attention and (hopefully) success. Best of luck to him.

In 2008 Cloverfield made $170 million from a $25 million budget and a very barebones marketing campaign that teased fans with the mystery of what exactly the film's monster looked like. The film's trailer (embedded below) shows three people in a bunker, apparently being held there by Goodman's character. At the end of the trailer Winstead's character attempts to escape, but is shocked by what she sees on the other side of the door. The audience will have to wait to find out what shocked her.

Speaking to Collider, producer JJ Abrams said: "The idea came up a long time ago during production. We wanted to make it a blood relative of Cloverfield. The idea was developed over time. We wanted to hold back the title for as long as possible."

The film is set to be released in the UK on 8 April.

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