Between yesterday’s news of Taken 3 moving forward and this, I think it’s safe to say whoever is making decisions at Fox is sitting atop the UTG shitlist.

John Landis’ son, Max Landis, became a must-know name earlier this year when his found footage superhero film, Chronicle, made a big splash with February moviegoers. The film was so successful that Fox decided almost immediately to move ahead with a sequel, and for once it actually made sense to do so as a handful of characters in the original are clearly setup to have future storylines worth exploring. However, some choice words from John Landis on the studio’s desires with the sequel now have us worried that it’s all going to go wrong (again).

While attending an event at Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The Playlist asked Landis about his son’s progress and plans for the next installment of Chronicle. Landis replied:

“He wrote a sequel, and it’s amazing, and the studio read it and said, ‘We want ‘Chronicle’ again!’ And he said, ‘No, this is the sequel, it’s the evolution, and they said ‘No, we want that movie again!’ So it’s difficult, we’re dealing with a difficult business.”

To say this is disheartening would be an understatement. Though I wasn’t a gigantic fan of Chronicle, I supported the notion of an original idea making its way to the big screen, and I was legitimately interested to see how the characters would evolve. Now it seems we’ll just have more of the same, just like Hangover 2 compared to The Hangover, only with more flying objects.

When asked about his direction for the sequel months back, Max commented:

“The movie you saw [Chronicle] in the sequel, is a thing. That edited footage … is a thing. So it’s not like ‘we found this footage after these kids died’. You can’t deny cars being thrown in the air in Seattle. You saw all those helicopters. The world changed. That’s the end of Chronicle. And things are going to be different now. They can’t possibly cover up what happened.”

Sounds good to me, but then again, I’m not the one looking for a paycheck.

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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