Chronicle was an innovative addition to the ‘found footage’ genre, offering a fresh take on the realm of ‘super-humans’ with some great chemistry between its young protagonists. The final act reached an explosive and visually mesmerizing conclusion. Now with word that a sequel is being developed, there are some wondering what direction a new story will take.
There’s no doubt that director Josh Trank made an impressive debut with Chronicle, but with success comes a slew of new projects and so he maybe unavailable when cameras start rolling on the sequel. He recently explained how he developed Chronicle saying, “it was an idea that I was sort of carrying around in my back pocket for a while.” The director said that he’d “been collecting little scenes in my head over the course of two or three years before I felt like I really saw it…”
Trank has become the go to guy for pop corn flicks, recently signing on to helm The Red Star, based on the Soviet-themed sci-fi fantasy comic book series, and Shadow Of The Colossus, a live-action adaptation of the bestselling Sony video game. He’s also developing a reboot of Fantastic Four and the Spider-Man spinoff Venom for Sony Pictures. It’s hoped that he will be able to continue the story of the extraterrestrial meteor that empowers teens with psychic abilities
Max Landis who wrote Chronicle, has been tapped by Fox to pen the sequel. He’s doesn’t know if Trank will return to direct, but says he will surely be involved in some way. In a recent interview Landis gave some clues as what we can expect in the next instalment, and hinted that a super-powered entity will wreak havoc on the world, and the surviving character Matt Garetty (Alex Russell) may just be the only person on earth to stop it:
I loved Matt, and I felt really bad for him because I understood just how emotionally lazy he is and how he doesn’t really do what he’s doing. And that’s why I’m putting him through hell in (Chronicle) 2.
Some found footage flicks try too hard to justify the camera as a participant, Chronicle felt more natural. The film’s final reel went into overdrive and incorporated vision from surveillance cameras, phones and news services which seamlessly moved the story forward at a dazzling pace. That said, the use of multiple viewpoints changed the focus of the story, and Landis mentioned how this will shift the events of the sequel which takes place after the events of the first film:
…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 this 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.
Chronicle is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
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