Recently it was revealed that Paramount was developing a “Duke Nukem” movie starring John Cena. Now comes word that the studio is ready to make a deal with Netflix to take the long delayed “Cloverfield” sequel “God Particle” off their hands. There’s no such thing as coincidences in this case, and particularly coming on heels of Paramount selling off the international rights to the upcoming “Annihilation” to the streaming giant, it’s clear the studio only wants to play the blockbuster game.
THR reveals that Netflix is in talks to acquire “God Particle.” The move has nothing to do with the quality of the movie, but instead, it’s the result of Paramount chairman Jim Gianopulos redefining what kind of films the studio will release.
“He sat down and looked at what is theatrical, what is not in this day and age,” a source told the trade.
Indeed, while “10 Cloverfield Lane” was a hit based on its $15 million budget, and made waves with its surprise announcement and marketing campaign, in today’s climate, $110 million worldwide isn’t going to cut it when you’re going up against the likes of Disney. In fact, Paramount’s lean release release slate for the rest of the year speaks volumes. It includes: “Sherlock Gnomes” (a family movie sequel); “Mission: Impossible 6“; WWII/horror movie “Overlord” (coming out in time for Halloween); and “Bumblebee: The Movie” (again, another family movie). In fact, there are only two other titles and they both seem at odds with Paramount’s unofficial new mandate: the John Krasinski/Emily Blunt thriller “A Quiet Place” and something called “Action Point” with Johnny Knoxville (which is supposed to come out in May, though I would not be surprised if that gets delayed or sold off, considering no one’s heard anything about it).
However, the twists keep coming with this story. Recently, “God Particle” suffered another release date bump (it was originally scheduled for February 24, 2017 then bumped to October 27, 2017 moved again to February 2nd and lastly to April 20th) and Vulture reported that J.J. Abrams was personally involved in all the rescheduling, partially to keep building hype around the picture (I’m not quite sure I buy that line of reasoning), and partially to shoot new scenes and material for the picture (which makes more sense). It should be noted, that the script by Oren Uziel (“22 Jump Street,” “Freaks Of Nature“) originally had nothing to do with the ‘Cloverfield’-universe and was only later redrafted to fit into the series. Whatever the case may be, Deadline says that if Netflix acquires the movie, they might actually release it before April 20th.
That’s certainly an intriguing proposition, and would fit right into Abrams’ desire to spring these movies out of nowhere on audiences. In fact, the viral marketing campaign for “God Particle” is already underway. There’s some mysterious stuff happening here, and more cryptic material at Tagruato, a website for a fictional mining company. Eagle eyed types have decoded the following message on the site:
Tokyo – January 18 2018 Tagruato has begun development on a revolutionary new energy technology In what Ceo Ganu Yoshida called a technological great leap foreward for our planet This renewable technology will take at least 4 year to complete with along with another six years International regulatory bodies to bring the powerful revolutionary energy source by april 18 2028.
This is all very cool, but by now, you might’ve forgotten what “God Particle” is actually about or even who’s in it. Well, let’s recap: David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ziyi Zhang, Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Brühl and Chris O’Dowd star in the movie that follows a group of astronauts who make a shocking discovery that changes the fabric of reality, leading to a fight for their survival….at least, that’s what we’ve been told thus far. But Deadline reveals that the story “revolves around a scientific experiment aboard a space station involving a particle accelerator that has unexpected results involving alien life. The astronauts find themselves isolated, and following their horrible discovery, the space station crew must fight for survival.” According to the site, one of the reasons “God Particle” was originally delayed was that it was seen as being too similar to Sony‘s “Life.” Hmm.
It seems the mystery only grows deeper with “God Particle” with each passing day, but at least it looks like we’ll finally get some answers very soon.