The Cloverfield Paradox is a movie that’s part of a popular movie franchise of the same name, and is a prime example of media stickiness. The movie wasn’t advertised at all until the day of its release, on February 4th of this year. The announcement occurred during the Super Bowl LII advertisements, with the real surprise being the release date: The movie would be made available to stream on Netflix immediately after the Super Bowl ended. Sure enough, the viewer count was high for the week, stretching to just under four million views. The movie was a certain success when it came to sheer view count, and attracted fair numbers. However, the movie became a subject of controversy when it was revealed that it was not originally meant to be part of the series, and the scenes that connected it to the franchise were added in post production. In essence, it was only a “Cloverfield” movie due to some stapled on footage. Leading back into stickiness, the production company depended on the single form of communication (the Super Bowl broadcast) to garner attention and interest. The consumer experience was carefully produced, and designed to give a unified view of the product at hand. While news of the movie spread throughout other platforms, the only direct effort by the film team was the single Super Bowl spot. If you view it in the context of spreadability and stickiness, it leans much heavier on the latter, because it did not need the former in any way. Getting a spot on the Super Bowl was all the production company needed to do to get clicks and views. If they had advertised it months before release or made regular trailers, the cracks in the film’s appearance would have become much clearer to general audiences, more so to hardcore fans. In this case, less proved to be much more. Without the total control of how the film was marketed, the film would have flopped. Even though it was panned critically, film quality was never the goal. Attention and views were, and that goal was passed with certainty.