Max Landis has been in the news a lot lately, partially due to his latest movie American Ultra bombing at the box office, but the writer also shared some of the pages of his Fantastic Four script and even talked about the plans he had for a trilogy. However before Fantastic Four and American Ultra, Landis was best known for Chronicle, which was directed by Josh Trank. Now Landis has spoken out about the ideas he had for a sequel.
“It begins in the storm with Steve (Michael B. Jordan),” Landis told The Daily Beast. “Lightning is going behind Steve and you hear Andrew (Dane DeHaan) going, ‘Leave me alone!’ and then you hear Matt (Alex Russell) go, ‘What’s going on? You have to come down right now!’ The next shot is the sun is rising over Seattle, they’re on a cliff outside the city, the camera’s been put down all the way, laying on the ground. Dane is going, ‘You don’t understand, my mom is really sick and I hate my dad, I’ve got to get out of the house—’” At this point, Landis begins to cry in the interview. “I’m crying, because I love this scene so much,” he continues. “Matt goes, ‘Dude, you’re my cousin. Stay with us. Get the fuck out of there.’ Andrew’s like, ‘I’m sorry, I feel like I’m going crazy’ and Matt’s like, ‘It’s okay, man, we’re here for you.’ And Steve’s like, ‘First things first—enough with this fucking camera.’ He turns it off, and the title comes up: Chronicle 2.”
Landis adds that the trio go on the run from the government and discover a new ability – the power to manipulate time. “The end of the movie is the government descends on them, there’s this whole fight, it’s very scary, Andrew is killed. Matt is killed. Steve’s alone and he’s being closed in on by the government going, ‘This didn’t happen this way.’ The government’s going, ‘Put your hands in the air!’ Steve looks at the camera and goes, ‘This didn’t happen this way.’ And just like that, it rewinds to the beginning of the second act of Chronicle 2 and you see them being filmed by these French girls that they were hanging out with, and you see Steve go, ‘We’ve gotta go.’”
His second pitch for Chronicle 2 was entitled Martyr and focused on a female character, who squares off with Matt from the first movie. “There’s this really interesting moment where she’s turned into this supervillain, she has a mechanized suit—like a real thing they can build now that would cost $20 million, but if you’re a genius you can do it—and she’s totally insane, living in this house with garbage everywhere, filming herself and talking to the camera on drones like it’s her boyfriend,” says Landis. “It’s one of my better scripts. It’s very dark. It’s not Chronicle. It has a much happier ending than Chronicle!”
What do you make of Landis’ Chronicle sequel ideas?
Originally published August 26, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
