I Am Legend was a huge hit for Warner Bros. back in 2007, and there have been talks of a sequel ever since. But nothing had ever come of it, and given the ending of the first movie, not to mention Will Smith’s public image right now, it had never seemed less likely. Well, until now, as producer/writer Akiva Goldsman says it is actually happening.
Goldsman spoke with Deadline and revealed that an I Am Legend sequel is on his upcoming slate, and the film will see Will Smith returning, joined by Michael B. Jordan.
Say wha?? Didn’t Smith’s character, Robert Neville, die at the end of the first movie? Well, yes, he did. But this new sequel is going to ignore all of that, and will instead use the alternate ending released on Blu-Ray. In that version, Neville is alive and well, and humanity is left to co-exist with this new species of mutants. Aspects of this version stick closer to the source material by author Robert Matheson.
“This will start a few decades later than the first,” Goldsman explained. “I’m obsessed with ‘The Last of Us,’ where we see the world just post-apocalypse but also after a 20-30-year lapse. You see how the earth reclaims the world, and there’s something beautiful in the question of, as man steps away from being the primary tenant, what happens? That will be especially visual in New York. I don’t know if they’ll climb up to the empire state building, but the possibilities are endless.”
Goldsman continued, “We trace back to the original Matheson book, and the alternate ending as opposed to the released ending in the original film. What Matheson was talking about was that man’s time on the planet as the dominant species had come to an end. That’s a really interesting thing we’re going to get to explore. There will be a little more fidelity to the original text.”
Does anyone really want an I Am Legend sequel? I’m not sure if matters when you’ve got the duo of Smith and Jordan attached. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops.
