Last month it was confirmed by the man himself that Max Landis was no longer involved with 20th Century Fox’s planned sequel to 2012’s box office success Chronicle, and now the screenwriter has been speaking about his idea for the follow-up to the low-budget super powers flick, revealing that he wanted to take the film in an entirely different direction with a script entitled Martyr.
“Gone was the aspirational ‘what would you do,’ gone were the pranks and the bromance, gone were lovely tragic Andrew and hopeful, bright Steve,” says Landis via Twitter. 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,” he continues. “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.”
Are you disappointed that Fox has chosen to go in a different direction for its Chronicle sequel? Let us know in the comments below….
Originally published August 13, 2013. Updated November 6, 2019.
