In an age of sequels we don’t want, one rises to challenge the tide: a follow-up to I Am Legend. Original star Will Smith, whose performance was widely and rightly praised, has signed on to reprise his role in the sequel to the post-apocalyptic 2007 film. Deadline also confirms that Black Panther‘s Michael B. Jordan is attached to star alongside Smith, and that the sequel will be written by the original film’s co-writer, Akiva Goldsman (Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discovery, and I, Robot). Smith, Jordan and Goldsman will be producing.
There’s just one minor hiccup: *insert 15-year-old spoiler alert* Smith’s character, Dr. Robert Neville – a scientist attempting to find a cure for a plague that has killed off most of humanity and turned survivors into vampiric, cannibalistic mutants called Darkseekers – does die at the end of I Am Legend. As of yet, it’s therefore unclear how the actor might return for the sequel.
It’s possible it’ll have something to do with the alternate ending contained in the two-disc special edition DVD, released in 2008, which more closely followed the novel on which the film is based. In this other ending, Neville returns the female Darkseeker to her alpha mate; the Darkseekers spare his life and depart, leaving Neville to realise he has become the monster in the eyes of the infected.
He later abandons his search for a cure and instead joins Anna and Ethan on their journey to a survivors colony. This alternate end to the film, though not part of I Am Legend’s final cut, could well become the set up for a sequel.
No director is yet attached, as the project is still being developed. Francis Lawrence directed the original film, and has since gone on to helm three of the four The Hunger Games films and Red Sparrow, which also stars Jennifer Lawrence. His next project is the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a sequel to the Hunger Games trilogy centring on a young Cornelius Snow.
