J.J. Abrams pulled off some pretty effortless misdirection, keeping us all so occupied with Star Wars: The Force Awakens that we had no idea about this little indie project he was producing titled 10 Cloverfield Lane. The trailer arrived with no warning, followed by Abrams confirming that the film is indeed related to Cloverfield, though it’s not really a direct sequel. One of the stars of his new mystery project is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who has opened up just a tiny bit about the secrecy surrounding the film and what we can expect when it hits theaters.

The trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane was simple and effective, and while it initially sent fans into a tailspin, it wasn’t long before we found out that this film is actually the Bad Robot mystery project previously known as Valencia — a film that’s been in the works for a few years now. Exactly how it ties into Matt ReevesCloverfield remains to be seen, but I have heard from a couple of sources that the Cloverfield connection was established later on in production. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It seems that someone at Bad Robot was struck with a clever idea at some point during filming, and found a way to sort of tie this film into Reeves’ found footage flick.

While Winstead herself obviously can’t say too much about the new film, she did speak to EW about the secrecy surrounding it:

There is this veil of secrecy to it from the very beginning. We were making this movie in this little bubble where nobody else knew what we were doing and there’s really only three actors in the whole thing, so it kind of felt like this really intimate experience. Now that it’s about to come out, it’s sort of crazy — like, ‘Oh yeah, people are excited to see this movie.’ I forgot that that was going to happen.

As seen in the trailer, the film centers on Winstead’s character, who is rescued from an accident and kept in a bunker by a doomsday prepper who claims to be protecting her from something terrible outside. She’s joined by John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr. in the simple thriller, which really only features the three actors. Winstead explains:

It’s so much about just the actors interacting with each other and that tension that builds, just all wondering if they are who they say the are, if they’re telling the truth or not, and really wondering what’s outside.

It should be reiterated that Abrams has said that 10 Cloverfield Lane is merely a “blood relative” to Cloverfield, so don’t get your hopes up too high about giant monsters or any direct connections to that film — though given Abrams’ history of playing coy, anything is possible.

10 Cloverfield Lane hits theaters on March 11.

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