J. J. Abrams Claims ‘End of Oak Street’ Not Connected to Big Franchise

The End of Oak Street looks like a fun, tense time. It’s about a street and its inhabitants being suddenly transported back to prehistoric times and having to fight for their lives against a host of dinosaurs. The film releases this Friday, and early reactions are pretty positive, with folks comparing it favorably to an Amblin movie. However, people thought it was more closely tied to the Cloverfield franchise, and J. J. Abrams is here to pour cold water on those theories.

Cloverfield, a found footage film about a giant monster attacking NYC, was pretty simple on its face. You could watch that film, get a singular experience, and probably have a few questions about the world. However, if you felt like diving deeper, there were teases to a whole world that Abrams, a producer on the film, has teased a return to in various forms over the years. But that has mostly resulted in sequels that are loosely connected to the original film, and often made that way after the fact.

Still, Abrams has kept teasing, and fans have kept hoping. The last Cloverfield news was that a proper, theatrical sequel to the original film would be created. Joe Barton was hired to write the screenplay in 2021, and Babak Anvari joined as director the following year. While there haven’t been any updates since, the producers behind the film series have made it clear that they want the next film to surprise people much in the same way the original did.

To that end, people have taken it upon themselves to try and suss out when a potential Cloverfield sequel is on the way, and while many thought that was the case with The End of Oak Street, Abrams claims otherwise, according to THR. “The only connection to our Cloverfield movies is that Ewan’s partner is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who was the star of 10 Cloverfield Lane, who we were very lucky to get to work with and who I adore,” the producer explained. “So there was that, but other than that, people are just making connections that they happen to see.”

Yes, people are making connections, but Abrams and crew have certainly stoked those fires over the years to limited success. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a tense thriller, but it barely has anything to do with the original film. The Cloverfield Paradox was a spec script that had the monster from the original film added in later. People are seeing loose connections because that’s mostly what they have been presented with.

But I’m pretty happy that The End of Oak Street isn’t tied to Cloverfield. I’d still very much like to see a sequel, but I don’t need it to be tacked onto another film. Just because that worked with the third Die Hard movie doesn’t mean it will work with monsters and aliens and such.