‘I Am Legend’ sequel will rely on alternate ending of original

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

A planned sequel Will Smith’s 2007 film “I Am Legend” will flip the script on what happened to his character in the end.

Producer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman talked to Deadline about the new movie that is set to star Will Smith and Michael B. Jordan, explaining that the sequel will be set “a few decades later than the first.”

“I’m obsessed with [the HBO series] ‘The Last of Us, where we see the world just post-apocalypse but also after a 20-30-year lapse,” he said. “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.”

For the sequel, Goldsman said, “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,” he said. “That’s a really interesting thing we’re going to get to explore. There will be a little more fidelity to the original text.”

The original movie was based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name and there is an alternate ending featured in a two-disc special edition DVD release of the film.

Both “I Am Legend” and the sequel are Warner Bros. projects, which shares a parent company with CNN.

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