Max Landis developing Fox series about a vigilante hero that you better not call a "superhero show"

Max Landis—whose screenplay for Chronicle ensured no one would refer to him as simply "John Landis' son" anymore—has sold another tale of young outcasts assuming great responsibility, this time mounting the drama Vigilant at Fox. Produced by Homeland's Howard Gordon, Vigilant concerns the twentysomething, "social outcast" daughter of a detective, who seeks revenge for her dad being brutally forced into working for corrupt cops by concocting a fictional vigilante alter ego. If that all sounds a bit like The Cape or Arrow—and the articles referring to it as a "superhero origin story" certainly further those comparisons, as does the basic idea of a person creating a fictional alter ego to fight crime—then Landis has a Twitter-bone to pick with you.

"Comparing it to The Cape or Powers or Arrow or Smallville is…just not accurate. No disrespect to those shows," Landis wrote, sort-of-clarifying, "No spoilers, but calling #vigilant a 'super hero show' is a lot like calling Taxi Driver a pre-cursor to Spider-Man 3 [or] saying Luther was inspired by Judge Dredd." Landis adds, "Vigilant comes at the whole equation of what a 'vigilante' in a very different way. It has more in common with The Wire than Smallville." So, those are definitely a lot of big expectations to be replaced by even bigger expectations. Anyway, we look forward to Max Landis' superhero show, Vigilant, which is about a superhero.