Following after his Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated success in The Pursuit of Happyness, 2007 saw Will Smith starring in I Am Legend, the third film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s same-named novel. Deemed a critical and commercial success, for years, there was talk of Smith reprising the role of Dr. Robert Neville in a prequel, but nothing ever came of that. However, today brings word that Smith is now returning for an I Am Legend sequel, and he’ll be starring opposite Michael B. Jordan.
No plot details have been revealed for I Am Legend 2 yet, nor has it been disclosed who Michael B. Jordan will play. That said, in addition to sharing screen time with Will Smith, Deadline shared that Jordan will also produce the sequel alongside his co-star. Akiva Goldsman, who penned I Am Legend, is returning to write and produce the sequel, but a director hasn’t been hired yet. Francis Lawrence, who directed the latter three Hunger Games movies, helmed the original movie and said back in 2018 that a sequel wasn’t necessary.
Shortly after this news was reported, Will Smith teasingly confirmed that he and Michael B. Jordan will be working together on the I Am Legend sequel with the below Instagram post.
It’s curious that Warner Bros. Pictures is moving forward with an I Am Legend sequel starring Will Smith given that in the first movie (spoiler warning), Robert Neville activated a grenade that took out him and the Darkseekers attacking him so that Alice Braga’s Anna Montez and Charlie Tahan’s Ethan could escape with the Darkseeker cure he’d just created. The two found their way to a survivors camp run by the military to deliver this cure, and thanks to Robert’s sacrifice, he became, you guessed it, a legend. Unless we’ll be seeing Neville through flashbacks or hallucinations/dream sequences, it’s hard to imagine a plausible way Smith’s character is still alive.
It is worth noting that I Am Legend has an alternate ending where Robert Neville survived and made it to the survivors camp with Anna and Ethan, but never created a cure. Instead, he’d come to realize the infected populace saw him as a monster. It’s possible I Am Legend 2 could follow after the events of the alternate ending, but that’ll confuse the people who saw the first movie in theaters and never viewed this different take on the story’s conclusion. Still, this won’t be the first Warner Bros.-distributed sequel arriving long after its predecessor that stars a character thought dead, as The Matrix Resurrections brought Keanu Reeves’ Neo back into the picture.
Obviously there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered regarding the I Am Legend sequel, but at least this project is providing the opportunity for Will Smith and Michael B. Jordan to finally work together. This big news comes a few months after Smith played Richard Williams in King Richard, and he was subsequently recognized in the Best Actor category in the 2022 Oscar nominations. Jordan grabbed attention last year chiefly for starring in Without Remorse and A Journal for Jordan, as well as vocally reprising Killmonger for two episodes of Marvel’s animated What If… ? series and cameoing in Space Jam: A New Legacy.
Along with I Am Legend 2, Will Smith is leading the Antoine Fuqua-directed action thriller Emancipation, while Michael B. Jordan is starring in and making his directorial debut with Creed III, as well as producing the Static Shock movie and the HBO Max series about the Val-Zod incarnation of Superman. If you’re in the mood to re-watch I Am Legend, it’s available to stream on Tubi.
