Jeffrey Jacob Abrams is an American filmmaker and composer. He is best known for his works in the genres of action, drama, and science fiction. Abrams wrote and produced such films as Regarding Henry (1991), Forever Young (1992), Armageddon (1998), Cloverfield (2008), Star Trek (2009), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
Bad Robot is an American film and television production company founded on May 27, 1999 and led by Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams as Co-CEO. Under its Bad Robot Productions division, the company is responsible for the television series Alias, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest, Revolution, and Westworld alongside the feature-length films Cloverfield, Star Trek, Super 8, Star Trek Into Darkness, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Star Wars Episodes VII and IX, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Star Trek Beyond, The Cloverfield Paradox, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Overlord.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an American actress. Her first major role was that of Jessica Bennett on the NBC soap opera Passions (1999–2000). She came to wider attention for her roles in the horror series Wolf Lake (2001–2002), the horror films Final Destination 3 (2006) and Death Proof (2007), and the slasher film Black Christmas (2006).
A spiritual successor is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous work, but does not explicitly continue the product line or media franchise of its predecessor, and is thus only a successor "in spirit". Spiritual successors often have similar themes and styles to their source material, but are generally a distinct intellectual property.
Super 8 is a 2011 American science fiction action thriller film written and directed by J. J. Abrams and co-produced by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Kyle Chandler and tells the story of a group of young teenagers in 1979 who are filming their own Super 8 movie when a train derails, releasing a dangerous presence into their town. The film was shot in Weirton, West Virginia, and surrounding areas, portraying the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio.
Portal is a 2007 puzzle-platform game developed and published by Valve. It was released in a bundle, The Orange Box, for Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and has been since ported to other systems, including Mac OS X, Linux, Android, and Nintendo Switch.
Cloverfield is a 2008 American found footage monster film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams, and written by Drew Goddard. It stars Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, and Odette Yustman. The plot follows six young New York City residents fleeing from a massive monster and various other smaller creatures that attack the city during a farewell party.
Dan Trachtenberg is an American filmmaker and podcast host. He is best known for directing the films 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and Prey (2022), the former earning him a Directors Guild of America Award nomination for Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film. In 2019, he directed the pilot episode of the Amazon Prime Video series The Boys, and in 2021 directed the pilot episode of the Peacock series The Lost Symbol, on which he also served as an executive producer.
The Weighted Companion Cube is a fictional item featured in the Portal series of video games by Valve Corporation. Initially featured in a single level of the original Portal, Test Chamber 17, as one of Aperture Science's ubiquitous Weighted Storage Cubes with heart symbols printed on the outside, it is given to the game's main character, Chell, as part of the antagonist GLaDOS's sinister testing initiative. After carrying it through the entire level and ostensibly anthropomorphizing and "bonding" with the Cube, the malevolent AI forces her to unceremoniously dispose of it in an incinerator device. Companion Cubes later re-appear in the game's sequel with a slightly different design. The original Companion Cube is shown to have survived the events of both Portal and Portal 2, appearing as part of an ending gag.
Portal 2 is a 2011 puzzle-platform game developed by Valve for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The digital PC version is distributed online by Valve's Steam service, while all retail editions were distributed by Electronic Arts. A port for the Nintendo Switch was included as part of Portal: Companion Collection.
GLaDOS is a fictional character from the video game series Portal. The character was created by Erik Wolpaw and Kim Swift and voiced by Ellen McLain. GLaDOS is depicted in the series as an artificially superintelligent computer system responsible for testing and maintenance in the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center in all titles. While GLaDOS initially appears in the first game to simply be a voice that guides the player, her words and actions become increasingly malicious as she makes her intentions clear. The second game, as well as the Valve-created comic Lab Rat, reveals that she was mistreated by the scientists and used a neurotoxin to kill the scientists in the laboratory before the events of the first Portal. She is apparently destroyed at the end of the first game but returns in the sequel, in which she is supplanted by her former intelligence dampener and temporarily stuck on a potato battery, while her past as the human Caroline is also explored.
Wheatley is a fictional artificial intelligence from the Portal franchise, first introduced in the 2011 video game Portal 2. He is voiced by British comedian and writer Stephen Merchant, and created in part by Portal 2's designer Erik Wolpaw.
Chell is the silent protagonist in the Portal video game series developed by Valve. She appears in both Portal and Portal 2 as the main player character and as a supporting character in some other video games. Not much is known about Chell but some posit she is the daughter of an employee at Aperture Science Laboratories, the main setting of the games.
Portal is a series of first-person puzzle-platform video games developed by Valve. Set in the Half-Life universe, the two main games in the series, Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011), center on a woman, Chell, forced to undergo a series of tests within the Aperture Science Enrichment Center by a malicious artificial intelligence, GLaDOS, that controls the facility. Most of the tests involve using the "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device" – nicknamed the portal gun – that creates a human-sized wormhole-like connection between two flat surfaces. The player-character or objects in the game world may move through portals while conserving their momentum. This allows complex "flinging" maneuvers to be used to cross wide gaps or perform other feats to reach the exit for each test chamber. A number of other mechanics, such as lasers, light bridges, high energy pellets, buttons, cubes, tractor funnels and turrets, exist to aid or hinder the player's goal to reach the exit.
10 Cloverfield Lane is a 2016 American science fiction horror thriller film directed by Dan Trachtenberg in his directorial debut, produced by J. J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber and written by Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle. The second film in the Cloverfield franchise, it stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher Jr. The story follows a young woman who, after a car crash, wakes up in an underground bunker with two men who insist that an event has left the surface of Earth uninhabitable.
Cloverfield is an American science fiction anthology film series and media franchise created and produced by J. J. Abrams consisting of three films, viral marketing websites linking the films together, and a tie-in manga to the first film titled Cloverfield/Kishin (2008), all set in a shared fictional universe referred to as the "Cloververse". The franchise as a whole deals with creatures from other dimensions attacking Earth throughout various decades, all as a repercussion of an experiment by an astronaut team aboard the Cloverfield Station in outer-space. Each film depicts the reality-altering effects of their study, which was meant to find a new energy source replacing the planet's depleted resources, only to open portals for assault from various beasts from deep space. All three installments are standalone in nature, though they connect through the Cloverfield story thread. A direct sequel to the first film was announced to be in development in early 2021.
The Cloverfield Paradox is a 2018 American science fiction horror film directed by Julius Onah and written by Oren Uziel, from a story by Uziel and Doug Jung, and produced by J. J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber. It is the third film in the Cloverfield franchise, following Cloverfield (2008) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016). It stars Daniel Brühl, Elizabeth Debicki, Aksel Hennie, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris O'Dowd, John Ortiz, David Oyelowo, and Zhang Ziyi. It follows an international group of astronauts aboard a space station who, after using a particle accelerator to try to solve Earth's energy crisis, must find a way home when the planet seemingly vanishes.
"Playtest" is the second episode in the third series of the British science fiction anthology television series Black Mirror. Written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, it premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016, with the rest of series three.
Corridor Digital is an American production studio based in Los Angeles, known for creating pop-culture-related viral online short-form videos since 2010, as well as producing and directing the Battlefield-inspired web series Rush and the YouTube Premium series Lifeline. It has also created television commercials for various companies, including Machine Zone and Google.
Prey is a 2022 American science fiction action film in the Predator franchise. It is the fifth film in the mainline series and seventh in the overall franchise. It is a prequel to the first four films, being set in the Northern Great Plains in 1719. The film is directed by Dan Trachtenberg and written by Patrick Aison. It stars Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Michelle Thrush, Stormee Kipp, Julian Black Antelope, and Bennett Taylor. The story revolves around a young Comanche woman, Naru, who is striving to prove herself as a hunter. She finds herself having to protect her people from a vicious, humanoid alien that hunts humans for sport, as well as from French fur traders who are destroying the buffalo they rely on for survival.
