Bad Robot's '10 Cloverfield Lane' Trailer: Is This 'Cloverfield 2'?

Paramount surprised audiences by releasing a new trailer attached to Michael Bay's 13 Hours:  The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. The trailer is for a movie that had yet to be officially titled, a new thriller from JJ Abrams' production company Bad Robot. The trailer is for a film titled 10 Cloverfield Lane. Did JJ Abrams and Bad Robot somehow secretly produce a sequel to Matt Reeves' found footage sci-fi film Cloverfield?

Is the movie a sequel to the film Cloverfield? Everything I had previously heard about the project made me believe it was a truly original thriller in the vein of Misery, but with a possible sci-fi mystery box twist.

My gut tells me it isn't a direct Cloverfield sequel, BUT it is very curious that producer JJ Abrams would release another unrelated film with "Cloverfield" in the title. And the surprise trailer debut in front of Bay's 13 Hours mirrors the mysterious and now infamous attachment of a trailer on Bay's 2007 film Transformers. The trailer featured just "Produced by J.J. Abrams" and the release date "1.18.08".Update: Producer JJ Abrams has issued a statement to Collider, saying the following:

"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."

What does being "a blood relative of Cloverfield" mean? We don't know.

Meanwhile, a member who participated in a test screening for Valencia confirms that 10 Cloverfield Lane is the same movie and says that the cut he saw was not a direct sequel to Cloverfield. So I'm assuming 10 Cloverfield Lane is more of a "cousin" than a "sequel." I saw this tweet from Drew McWeeny and tend to agree with his assessment:

Just imagine this is a shot at creating Bad Robot's anthology banner. "If it says Cloverfield on it, you can expect twists and wild ideas."

— DrewMcWeeny (@DrewMcWeeny) January 15, 2016

Our original story follows:

After further evaluation, I have concluded that the trailer in front of 13 Hours is for the movie that was going under the working title Valencia. That's right, the movie directed by our longtime friend Dan Trachtenberg. The film, which shot in New Orleans in late 2014, has been editing deep inside the mystery box of Bad Robot Productions, which had an extra shell of security due to a little film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

What we've heard previously, the original script made the rounds under the title "The Cellar" was written by by Josh Campbell and Matt Steucken. Damien Chazelle supposedly did an extensive rewrite, and as far as we know, the story follows a young woman who wakes up in a cellar after a severe car accident and fears she has been abducted.

"Her captor, a doomsday prepper, tells her he saved her life and that there has been a terrible chemical attack that has left the outside uninhabitable. She does not know what to believe and as tensions rise, she decides she must escape, regardless of the terrors that await outside."

The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr.   10 Cloverfield Lane is set to hit theaters on March 11th 2016.