Will Smith Offers Update on I AM LEGEND Sequel and Says "It's Looking Good"
Will Smith has offered another update on the I Am Legend sequel that he's developing with Michael B. Jordan. The film was announced last year, and Francis Lawrence is set to direct the movie.
During a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, he shared: "We had a couple weeks together about a month ago. I think it's looking good. [We have some] really solid ideas... I think we're going to make it on screen together."
Smith added that Jordan is "the truth, so I would love to do that." He previously talked about where they are in the process, saying: “We’re really close, script just came in.”
He then added: “You have to be a real I Am Legend buff to know this, but in the first, theatrical version, my character dies, but on the DVD there was an alternate version of the ending where my character lived. We are going with the mythology of the DVD version. I can’t tell you anything more, but Michael B. Jordan is in.”
Lawrence also previously talked about why he wanted to take on the project, saying: "This will start a few decades later than the first. I'm obsessed with The Last of Us, where we see the world just post-apocalypse but also after a 20-30-year lapse.”
He teased: “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.”
He went on to discuss the influence that Richard Matheson's 1954 novel will have on the sequel: “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."
In the first film, Smith played virologist Robert Neville, who was seemingly the last man on Earth. He was sole survivor of a man-made plague and immune to the virus that turned the infected into the vampire-like Darkseekers. Neville successfully developed a cure.
It will be interesting to see how they continue the story from the original scrapped movie ending.