It is official, Warner Bros has greenlit a prequel to I Am Legend. Will Smith has signed on to reprise his role as Robert Neville, and Francis Lawrence has returned as director. Looks like Lawrence won’t be finding time to work on Chuck Palahniuk’s Survivor anytime soon. According to Variety, D.B. Weiss (The Game) is writing the script based on a detailed plot outline that was developed over the past few months by Smith, Lawrence, Akiva Goldsman (producer and screenwriter of the original).

The prequel will follow Neville in the last days before and after the man-made virus kills/mutates New York City. A sequel was considered, but obviously wouldn’t have been possible without starting over with a completely new lead character/actor. No word on if author Richard Matheson was consulted about the film. Apocalyptic stories usually sit in one of two categories, pre-Apocalyptic (ie Armageddon, Independence Day) or post-Apocalyptic (I Am Legend, Children of Men), so it will be an interesting change to see a film which might straddle both.

Source

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under Will Smith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.