Will Smith, who has stayed low since “that” Chris Rock slap, is set to make a comeback as Robert Neville for a sequel to the 2007 movie I am Legend. Smith will save New York from a Zombie apocalypse in the dystopian future.
The sci-fi movie, based on the 1954 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson, came out in 2007 garnering acclaim from critics and raking in big numbers at the box office with a net gross in excess of $500 million.
Producer and Screen writer AkivaGoldsman has confirmed that the sequel will be set decades after the story in the first movie and screenplay will stay true to the original theme and storyline of Matheson, however, there will be an alternate ending to make room for Will Smith’s character’s return.
Will Smith had slapped the comedian Chris Rock in what is now a notorious famous incident in Hollywood history on-stage for a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith. This will be Smith’s first major work since that slap.
Talking to Deadline, Goldsman said that I am Legend 2 will “trace back to the original Matheson book” and return to the New York post-apocalyptic scene a “few decades later than the first.”
‘We’re starting with two projects that are fun and very much Warners; the sequel to I Am Legend, with Will and Michael B. Jordan, and the sequel to Constantine with Keanu Reeves that Francis Lawrence is going to direct,’ he further told Deadline.
“I’m obsessed with The Last of Us, where we see the world just post-apocalypse but 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,”Goldsman continued.
“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.”
