10 Cloverfield Lane: A Complete Guide To The Viral Marketing

Tagruato's back!

By Alex Leadbeater /

The best thing about Cloverfield wasn't the movie itself (although that was pretty great) or how irritatingly restrained its trailers were, but the viral marketing campaign. In the months up to release, Paramount and Bad Robot executed one of the best Alternate Reality Games (ARG) ever, piggy-backing on the mystery innate to the project and crafting a rich universe that (possibly) explained where the spindly, statue-decapitating monster came from. Little wonder then that 10 Cloverfield Lane has repeated the trick. The shock sequel/spin-off/whatever-the-heck-it-is burst onto the scene in January with a trailer announcing the movie less than two months ahead of release, and since then has had a great little ARG of its own that links the new film to the Cloverfield universe and attempts to provide key background to what's going on. We may not know what 10 Cloverfield Lane is yet, but we do know it's been a fun ride to get there. Alternate Reality Games are, almost by their nature, incredibly involved and a pain to keep track of without constant check-ups, so to prep you for Dan Trachtenberg's suddenly-anticipated debut, here's a guide to everything that's gone down in the viral marketing (so far).