For years, there have been rumors about screenwriter-director Max Landis. He’s given interviews where he sounds like an emotionally abusive, negging a–hole, and here’s a big shock: he was totally that guy this whole time. For the most part, the rumors were just that. Women who had dated him or worked with him or knew him socially would insinuate that he’s a horrible person, or they would detail what some unnamed man did to them. As we saw with Harvey Weinstein and other predators, there is strength in numbers in the Me Too era. Now eight women have come forward to detail, to the Daily Beast, how Max Landis abused them emotionally and physically. You can and should read the full piece here. Here’s just the start of the piece:

When Ani Baker decided to post her Max Landis warning on social media last week, it was with one word in mind: “protect.” She had been extremely upset to learn that Landis, the screenwriter behind Chronicle and Bright, still had videos of Baker posted in the “highlight” section of his Instagram, despite the fact that she had broken up with him months ago and demanded no contact. Baker figured that new, vulnerable women just entering Landis’ life would quickly find her page.

“If you have found my page via Max Landis, hi,” Baker wrote. “I’m going to give you some direct info I wish I had gotten, because the experience/aftermath of this person is really destructive, and it will be riddled with pain and emotional work that you don’t need to spend your precious energy on.” Baker told The Daily Beast that she quickly received supportive responses, many from other women who had their own Max Landis stories: “Women that I had never heard of who are like, I too was tortured by this person.”

“It gets worse every day,” Baker continued. “Every story I hear, I’m like, how did I think I knew this person? It’s horrifying. But I just feel like I need to be as honest as possible, since my goal in this is to help other people to not be in the same position.”

Baker wasn’t the first person to call Landis out on his “destructive” behavior. Back in 2017, a number of entertainment-industry insiders wrote about Landis on social media—the posts ranged from not-so-subtle subtweets to overt call-outs. In response to a Netflix tweet promoting Bright, an upcoming Landis project, the actress Anna Akana responded, “Written by a psychopath who sexually abused and assaults women, right? Cool.” (Max Landis did not respond to multiple requests for comment through his representative.)

[From The Daily Beast]

Much like Weinstein, women were passing on information to other women in various ways about Landis, but even then, too many women got ensnared. Anna Akana told the Daily Beast that after she went public, ten people had come to her to tell her about their first-hand experiences of Landis’ sexual misconduct. An ex-girlfriend also spoke to the DB anonymously, saying that Landis had raped her repeatedly during their two-year relationship.

Apparently, Landis has a “carefully curated” group of about 100 friends whom he calls the Colour Society, and many of them are creative industry types. That’s how he lures young women in – he offers them access to cool, creative people and friendships, and what he’s really doing is tying a woman to his circle of friends so it will be easier for him to hunt her. Some of the Daily Beast’s sources suggest that the atmosphere around the Colour Society is very cult-like, and Landis is the persistent and yet weirdly “charismatic” cult leader. The descriptions of how he pursued women and then how he treated them when they were dating… my God. What a disgusting monster he is.

Photos courtesy of WENN.