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I Am Legend 2 producer and writer Akiva Goldsman has clarified how Will Smith’s character will appear in the sequel.
The original 2007 zombie horror, directed by Francis Lawrence, follows Smith as Robert Neville, a US Army virologist and the last surviving human New Yorker who spends his days trying to find a cure for a virus that wiped out humanity.
Since the follow-up was announced in 2022, fans have speculated how Neville could reappear after he sacrificed himself to save mankind.
However, in a famous alternate ending that was included in the DVD extras, Robert abandons his research and heads off in search of a survivors’ colony.
“We’re sequelizing the alternative cut,” Goldsman confirmed during Collider’s Producers on Producing panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday (July 25). “Where Will lives and things don’t go well for humanity.”
“The world returns in a way that is kind of spectacular – an exciting playground for all of us – not your father’s I Am Legend,” Goldsman teased.
Michael B Jordan (Creed) will join Smith in the sequel, it was announced in 2022.
“We’re still working on the script and getting that up to par,” he told People magazine last month. “It doesn’t have a release date or anything like that. I’m not sure exactly where we’re going to be filming that one, but I’m really excited to get in front of the camera with him [Smith].”
Jordan said Smith is “somebody that I’ve looked up to for a really long time, [so] to be able to work with Will is something I’m really looking forward to. I’m really excited.”
Last year, Goldsman said he was taking inspiration from HBO’s wildly successful zombie series, The Last of Us.
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“I’m obsessed with The Last of Us, where we see the world just post-apocalypse but also after a 20-to-30-year lapse,” he told Deadline. “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.”
The film was adapted from author Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name.
“What Matheson was talking about was that man’s time on the planet as the dominant species had come to an end,” Goldsman 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.”
