Aside from being John Landis' son, Max Landis is establishing quite the little career for himself as a writer. He’s already got horror pic Chronicle in pre-production and now Ron Howard has scooped up his script Amnesty as a possible directing project.
Naturally, Howard’s regular producing cohort Brian Grazer is also attached, and the duo’s Imagine Entertainment has convinced Universal to blag the rights to the screenplay.
Not much is known about the plot just yet, though Deadline’s Mike Fleming reports it apparently blends JRR Tolkien’s** Lord of the Rings** style with Robert Ludlum. So it’s a conspiracy thriller set among the Elves, Dwarfs and Orcs of Middle-Earth? Doubt it, but as high concept pitches go, it’s not a bad one.
Still, Amnesty will likely have to cool its heels for a while as Howard and Grazer are already slightly busy on a tiny little side project: turning Steven King’s sprawling Dark Tower fantasy epic into a set of films and a TV series. They, along with writer Akiva Goldsman are already hard at work preparing to make the first movie with Javier Bardem starring. So when Landis' script will actually get made is anyone’s guess, particularly as Howard always has loads of projects sitting in his development tray…