8. Chronicle 2
Chronicle was one of the biggest surprises of 2012. The found footage genre was given a superhero spin and made $126 million worldwide from a $12 million budget. It was the directorial debut of Josh Trank (who will soon be helming 20th Century Fox's Fantastic Four reboot), helped launch the career of actor Dane DeHaan, and was written by Trank and Max Landis. Fox was quick to announce that Landis had been hired to pen a sequel, but in October 2012 the studio rejected his draft and he has since left the project. Chronicle is another film that could easily stand on its own as something of a gem in the sci-fi and superhero genres. However, Landis and Trank did an incredible job at building the world that these characters live in, and left the film wide-open for sequels. It would be great to see the same type of smart, innovative storytelling infused with the found-footage format again, as long as the studio doesn't try to simply recreate what happened in the first film and finds a way to tell a new, exciting story. Unfortunately, this may be hard to do if Trank and Landis don't return, but it's certainly not impossible. According to Landis, a new hire has been brought on for the project, so we'll just have to wait and see.