I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, is the third adaptation based on the 1954 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. While the first two adaptations – 1964’s The Last Man On Earth and 1971’s The Omega Man – were centered on the basic story of a man left alone in a world filled with diseased people, I Am Legend went further.
Released in 2007, I Am Legend performed favorably in the US and internationally and received mostly positive reviews from critics, with Will Smith’s performance in the post-apocalyptic movie receiving the best praise.
15 years later and the news of a sequel has decided to finally make it to the light.
I Am Legend Director Says He’s “Sworn To Secrecy” Over the Movie’s Details
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In March, Deadline broke the news that Warner Bros. is indeed working on an I Am Legend sequel, thereby making it the first adaptation that will go further than the first movie.
Will Smith will be returning, but his role in the movie remains unknown. In the first movie, he played Neville, an immune virologist who tries to find a cure to the man-made plague that has claimed the rest of humanity.
A brand new, and high-profile, addition to the movie is Black Panther’s Michael B. Jordan. Jordan is joining as a co-producer on the show, alongside Will Smith. He will also star in it, in a yet undisclosed role.
While no one working on the sequel wants to tell us what we can expect from this upcoming addition to the epic thriller, we do know that the movie’s original writer Akiva Goldsman will be returning.
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Comicbook.com’s Brandon Davis was able to have a chat with Francis Lawrence, the director of the first movie, in the hopes of getting him to share some insights into the movie’s production. However, Lawrence disappointed fans by revealing that he isn’t officially on board with the project, and even if he is, he won’t be telling us.
“I have spoken to Akiva [Goldsman] a little bit about it, but I think that is still aways away. I’d love to do it,” Lawrence said. “I’ve heard some things about I Am Legend. We actually don’t have much, just brainstorming things for Constantine, but I’m sworn to secrecy on I Am Legend.”
Originally, when the first movie was released, Francis Lawrence was convinced that he won’t ever be embarking on the road to making a sequel. But after a few years, he began to seriously contemplate heading back into the world run over by the Darkseekers.
“[The studio] was really, really, really into coming up with something, and I just didn’t know how to do it,” the filmmaker shared with the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2018. “I saw very quickly after the movie came out, and I went, ‘People came to see the last man on earth. We’ve done the last man on earth, he died at the end of the movie, we can’t do it again.’ But people weren’t in love with him as a character. It’s not Indiana Jones, like this kind of iconic character that you just want to see again and again and again.”
Will I Am Legend Sequel Run With the Alternate Ending?
I Am Legend, led by Will Smith, is one of those rare movies that choose to let fans choose their best ending by having more than one ending. The original ending saw Smith’s character Neville die in order to protect the cure for the plague. In the end, the survivors remember his fight to find the cure and brand him a “legend”.
In the alternate ending, released in 2008, Neville discovers that he’s as much a monster to the infected humans, now Darkseekers, as they are to him. With this new revelation, he abandons his search for the cure and instead goes out to search for survivors.
If Will Smith is coming back, it might be a hint that the alternate ending could be the way they choose to go for I Am Legend‘s sequel.
Which ending should Warner Bros. run with for the I Am Legend sequel: the original or the alternate? We’d love to hear your theories in the comments or on Twitter, and check back with the Illuminerdi for more Warner Bros. content.
Source: Comicbook.com
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