Max Landis Writing Chronicle 2

Fox wants more super-powered teensIt's a great week for that creative team involved with found footage super hero saga Chronicle. Yesterday, whispers started to interrupt that director Josh Trank had been specific by The new sony to defend myself against its planned Venom spin-off. We considered whether author Max Landis might add scripting responsibilities on that film to his busy work plate, but he's just obtained another thing which will keep him from the roads for some time: he'll write the Chronicle follow up. The film, which saw three teens performed by Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell and Michael B. Jordan getting telekinetic forces from the strange glowing substance, has gained $105 million worldwide after just 33 days in movie theaters. Pretty good for any movie that cost around $12 million to create. Naturally Fox is searching to visit that well again and we'd say employing the guy who authored the script appears just like a wise move.Be advised: we are going to enter into SPOILERS for anybody who has not seen the very first movie. Nothing continues to be stated by what the follow up might, er, chronicle (sorry, however it needed to be achieved), although the first film finishes with Jordan's Steve dead, DeHaan's Andrew apparently joining him within the afterlife and Russell's Matt travelling the planet on the look for a little meaning following the tragic occasions. Is the new story escape from the found footage style? We'll need to wait and find out. For a director, we are unsure Trank is going to be back, but he may just feel protective of his shared baby.Once we pointed out above, it is not as if Landis continues to be hanging out tweeting every couple of minutes (even when it feels as though he's, sometimes) since finishing focus on the very first film. She has several scripts at various stages bubbling away in development, including one of the numerous Frankenstein projects and Pied Piper at Fox, mercenary comedy Good Time Gang and adventure thriller Amnesty, that has Ron Howard attached.

Cable execs open to bending branding rules

For all the be-all, end-all importance that branding has for cable networks in this day and age, several top execs agreed at Wednesday's Hollywood Radio and Television Society panel that too much tunnel vision can be risky. "You spend a lot of time focusing on brand, but you have to take a step back and think about the way people see television," AMC exec veep of original programming, production and digital content Joel Stillerman said at the HRTS Cable Programming Summit at the Beverly Hilton. "And I'm not sure people are as fixated on it as we are in terms of whether what we're watching makes sense on any given channel. ... People are more forgiving." That's why, according to Starz managing director Carmi Zlotnik, you have to be open to deviating from your ongoing formula not only in style, but even in genre. "The thing you want to make sure is (that) you don't put on blinders, and somehow a great idea eludes you as a result," Zlotnik said. "The unscripted world is a valid world where there's a lot of great ideas. ... It's good for us, it's good for our brands (and) it's good for creating a stimulating environment around us to have a lot of different people coming in with different ideas." Added TNT, TBS and TCM programming topper Michael Wright: "You go to great lengths to say, 'Here's who we are, here's who's watching us, here's the kind of tone we're looking for ... but feel free to (pitch) us that thing we don't know we want, as long as you can explain why it works for this audience,' " Wright said. Even a show whose cancelation comes too quick can serve a purpose, MTV programming head David Janollari said, citing the cabler's one-season-and-done "Skins" (after joking "You're really going to bring that up?" to moderator Billy Bush). "It was the show that planted our flag in the scripted space, (helping) our audience to see us as a destination for scripted programming as well as all the reality fare, and I thought it was a valiant effort," Janollari said. "It didn't ultimately ignite a huge enough broad audience like the way we were looking for it to do ... but it did a great deal with our audience in terms of establishing the direction that we're going in." As ABC Family programming and development EVP Kate Juergens said: "You have to be loud in cable to get people's attention, and in order to be loud, you have to be a bit edgy." To be clear, no executive was saying that branding didn't matter, with Wright commenting that "we're not in the business of trying to shove a square peg into a round hole." Rather, they were acknowledging that the path to effective branding was not always a straight one, that there was room for going off script, so to speak. "You have sampling loyalty," Wright said. "You build up a level of trust with a viewer who has seen a number of shows, and they say, 'These guys pretty consistently deliver a certain kind of show,' then they're likely to sample a new show." Said Stillerman: "People have what's called a 'consideration set.' You want to be in that set. People form habits and they're hard to break, so if you're in the first three or four channels that they go to, that's a incredibly valuable commodity that you have to protect. So, I do think people have brand loyalty, I just don't think they're as dogmatic." Contact Jon Weisman at jon.weisman@variety.com

Universal dates 'Identity Thief'

Universal has set a May 10, 2013 release date for Seth Gordon's crime comedy "Identity Thief."Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy are attached to star with Scott Stuber to produce through his Stuber Pictures banner, alongside Bateman and Peter Morgan for DumbDumb. Pic revolves around a man whose identity is stolen by a woman.Universal used the same weekend last year for the opening of "Bridesmaids," for which McCarthy received an Oscar nom."Identity Thief" will open against Warner Bros.' sci-fier "Pacific Rim," directed by Guillermo del Toro in the tale of an alien attack threatening the Earth's existence. Contact Dave McNary at dave.mcnary@variety.com