While attending the National Board of Review red carpet event, director J.J. Abrams commented on the status of a potential Cloverfield sequel.  For those who may not remember, Cloverfield was a first-person take on giant monster movies.  It followed a group of bystanders, armed with a video camera (which was the single point of view for the film) as they desperately tried to escape New York under siege by a monster of unknown origin.  While vague, Abrams at least acknowledged that something is being worked on, "We're working on something right now with that and again, you know its early stages."

Hit the jump for more on one possible direction Cloverfield 2 could take.

Let me start by saying I'm a huge fan of Cloverfield.  Sure, the premise had been done before, pioneered by The Blair Witch Project, but nothing had been done on this scale from a first-person perspective.  By scale I don't simply mean the size of the monster, which was huge, but also the proliferation of user generated content.

You see, any number of people may have been recording the events that occurred in Cloverfield.  There could be hundreds, if not thousands, of videos capturing the destruction, monster, and military response to the threat.  Therein lays the great sandbox that is Cloverfield.

You can take any character in that film with a video camera and tell their story.  I would say this offers limitless potential, but there is the one caveat of having to tell a compelling story as well.  Watching random footage of this particular event would get pretty boring.  That being said, I do have one dream scenario for a sequel.

Nothing would please me more then to see the military's perspective of the events in Cloverfield.  Let me pitch this idea as simply as possible: it's Aliens meets Cloverfield.  Put a camera (or cameras) behind an elite squad of soldiers tasked with killing the monster and I'll be there.  The premise would certainly work given the massive military response we saw in the first film.

Interestingly enough, Aliens director James Cameron (Avatar) proved he was ahead of his time once again.  All the Colonial Marines in Aliens were outfitted with cameras on their helmets.  We even got to watch some of that footage, and for anyone who saw the film you know how well it worked at putting you right in the action.

Now, Abrams would probably want to up the ante for the sequel so here are two more suggestions.  Add some great 24-esque split-screens with each soldier's video footage and drop in some Avatar-like 3D to make everything that much more real.  Put all these elements together and Cloverfield 2 practically writes itself.