Fox Hires Screenwriter For CHRONICLE 2

Although original director Josh Trank is in the process of revving up production on the studio’s Fantastic Four reboot and they’ve also rejected original screenwriter Max Landis’s proposal for continuing the story, Twentieth Century Fox is still interested in a sequel to 2012’s teens-with-superpowers, found footage film Chronicle.

To that end, they’ve hired screenwriter Jack Stanley to develop a new story idea for Chronicle 2. If the name is unfamiliar to you, there’s good reason as this is the writer’s first major studio gig. He first came to everyone’s attention when his spec script Sweetheart, landed on last year’s Black List. The logline from Deadline – “[T]he story of a female assassin whose attempt to get out of the biz is thrown awry by her high school reunion” – makes it sound like a gender-bent version of the 1997 John Cusack dark comedy Grosse Pointe Blank. Stanley also has another spec, a werewolf film called Silver, making the rounds of the studios right now that is also generating some interest in the 25-year-old writer.

Last August, Landis gave us some hints as to what his version of the film would be like, including dropping the title Martyr. He further elaborated a bit the following November to Buzzfeed. What he did divulge sounded very intriguing and I don’t envy Stanley the task of coming up with something equally interesting and not more of the same from the first film.