Warner Bros announce ‘I am Legend’ sequel starring Will Smith
Esteemed filmmaker Akiva Goldsman is returning his Weed Road Pictures production company to Warner Bros in a multi-year deal. Alongside the announcement, Goldsman has announced a sequel for 2007’s ‘I am Legend’ starring Will Smith. Smith will take production duties and star alongside Black Panther’s Michael B. Jordan.
Goldsman, who was responsible for adapting Richard Matheson’s original 1954 novel back in 2007, will return to write the proposed sequel. In a conversation with Deadline this week, Goldsman explained how a sequel to I Am Legend starring the controversial Smith might work. Spoiler alert: For those of you scratching your heads, the first movie did indeed end with Smith’s character finding the cure but dying in the process.
“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.”
“We trace back to the original Matheson book and the alternate ending as opposed to the released ending in the original film,” he added. “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.”
News of an I am Legend follow-up comes just a week after Warner Bros confirmed that the long-awaited Constantine sequel starring Keanu Reeves is still going ahead. Francis Lawrence is returning to direct the movie.
“Reeves will reprise supernatural exorcist and demonologist John Constantine who in the original is dying but stays around to save his soul by keeping demons from hell from breaching earth,” a press statement read. “He also gets between a battle between the archangel Gabriel and Lucifer.”
Watch the official trailer for the original I am Legend below.
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