Max Landis Talks About His Plans for CHRONICLE 2
20th Century Fox and Chronicle screenwriter Max Landis are no longer working on the sequel together due to creative differences. The studio has hired a new writer to work on the project to cater to what the studio wants to see. But! That doesn't mean we can't know what Landis was planning. He took to his Twitter recently and described the following:
"in retrospect, I'm not even sure if fans of the first film would've been ready or eager for my second installment as originally written. Gone was the aspirational 'what would you do,' gone were the pranks and the bromance, gone were lovely tragic Andrew and hopeful, bright Steve.
In their place was a dark, frustratingly unblinking stare into a complicated world that posed the question is it worth it to be a hero, told from the point of view of a heartbroken and insane woman who would martyr herself to the cause of being the world's first villain.
It was, in my estimation, a sequel that elaborated on the ideas and situations from the first to create a different genre of movie, in the best of worlds, in my optimistic but wildly prejudiced eyes, this could make it an Aliens, a Terminator 2… in the worst a Grease 2. So, at the end of the day, maybe it's better that Martyr never saw the light of day. Sad I didn't get to do some of my other versions. The multi-movie low [budget] Chronicle-based found footage superhero universe culminating in an Avengers type team up was a real good one."I don't know about you but I would have loved to see that vision of the film. I want to see something completely different than then first movie, but with Landis gone, chances are the sequel will end up just being a remake of the first movie. I hate when studios do that, but that's just what they do because they think that's what audiences want to see. Unfortunately they are right, the majority of the audiences do want to see a familiar-looking sequel. It's a sad fact, but that's why a lot of the sequels we end up getting are the way they are.
What do you think of the direction Landis was going to take the sequel?