I AM LEGEND Sequel Will Honor First Film's Alternate Ending and and is Inspired By THE LAST OF US

The sequel to I Am Legend was announced last year. Will Smith is set to return to reprise his role, and he will be joined by Michael B. Jordan in this next chapter of the story. Francis Lawrence is set to direct the movie, and in a recent interview with Deadline he shared some details on the project, revealing that it will take place after the alternate ending of the first film and be set a few decades after the events that took place. Lawrence explained:

"This will start a few decades later than the first. 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.”

He went on to discuss the influence that Richard Matheson's 1954 novel will have on the sequel:

“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."

Maybe this sequel will actully end up being better than the first movie. I wasn’t a fan of the first film, I much more prefer Vincent Price’s 1964 adaptation, The Last Man on Earth.

The theatrical ending of I Am Legend features Neville finding a cure, which he gives to those who survived and they go off in search of a colony of survivors. Neville ends up blowing himself up to stop invading Darkseekers.

In the alternate ending, before he sacrifices himself, he realizes that these Darkseekers have an intelligence and community to them, and they spare his life. After surviving this encounter, Neville also goes out in search of a colony of survivors.