It was certainly nice to see an original movie like Chronicle make it to the top of the box office charts – especially since it deals with a genre that often runs the risk of being overdone.
Nevertheless, screenwriter Max Landis and director Josh Trank were able to deliver a movie that generated positive reviews from just about everywhere, and they shot it in the found footage style, just as that style of storytelling seems to be making a comeback.
As you may recall, Max is the son of John Landis, director of Animal House, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, and Coming to America. Like his father, Max has a healthy sense of irreverence as well as switching genre gears, which he did with Chronicle.
As Landis told the Writer’s Guild website, “A lot of people are going into [Chronicle] expecting popcorn, and we’re trying to give them a steak. We’re trying to give them a three course meal. If you walk in expecting Spider-Man and end up with No Country For Old Men, I think it’s a good experience.”
Landis is also getting a lot of notice for his short, The Death and Return of Superman, which hit the web the same day as Chronicle’s release, and it currently has over 800,000 hits. (“Landis nails it with his short film,” MTV raved.)
According to his Wiki page, Chronicle was previously on The Black List of hot scripts, and other projects Landis has lined up include Good Time Gang, which will reportedly star Jonah Hill and Mark Wahlberg, Amnesty, which Ron Howard is attached to direct, updates of Frankenstein and The Pied Piper, as well as a space travel adventure for Disney.
