Max Landis is a fairly polarizing figure in the film industry, partly because he’s the son of John Landis and will continue to get opportunities even when his projects flop and partly because he tends to have awful opinions about Star Wars characters, but now he may have finally landed a film that will prove once and for all that he can cut it in Hollywood without relying on his name. That’s because, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Max Landis has signed on to write and direct a remake of An American Werewolf In London, the 1981 horror comedy film originally written and directed by…John Landis.
So maybe we spoke too soon about that “without relying on his name” stuff, but whatever. The THR story also notes that this remake will be produced by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and another of that show’s executive producers (David Alpert), so at least they’re not part of the Landis family. Also, snark aside, Landis wrote Chronicle and American Ultra, both of which were fairly good.
Interestingly, this will not be Landis’ first time working on An American Werewolf In London. In August of 2014, he recreated the original’s famous transformation scene for CineFix’s “Homemade Movies” series: