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‘I Am Legend’ Sequel Will Follow Book’s Alternative Ending, Says Producer

It has been 16 years since I Am Legend was first released but thanks to The Last of Us, the sci-fi/horror flick will be getting a fresh sequel.

I Am Legend starred Will Smith in the role of Doctor Robert Neville. Neville is the last human survivor of a plague in the whole of New York and throughout the movie, attempts to find a way to reverse the effects of the man-made virus by using his own immune blood.

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The sequel will bring back Smith into the fold as Doctor Neville but the question is – how? As viewers may recall, the movie ends with Smith’s character saving the cure but dying in the process.

i am legend

Producer/Writer Akiva Goldsman has confirmed that the sequel will ignore the first movie’s ending and follow the book’s original ending. In Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel, Doctor Neville lives on to fight another day.

“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,” said Goldsman (via Deadline).

Goldsman even used HBO’s hit video game adaptation series The Last of Us as a point of reference as to how the I Am Legend sequel will shape up.

“This will start a few decades later than the first,” he said. “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.”

I Am Legend is just one of the many IPs receiving a sequel at Warner Bros. A Constantine sequel is still happening.