Warner Brothers started planning for an I Am Legend sequel mere weeks after the first one debuted, and now those plans have ripened. Variety says they’re set to go with Will Smith back as Dr. Robert Neville and Francis Lawrence is back to direct.
How do you make a prequel? You do all the stuff they skipped over in the first movie. I Am Legend shows how the plague started, and then skips years down the road after it’s already wreaked havoc on the world and left Will Smith utterly alone. The prequel will show all the panic in between as the plague does its dirty work among the New York population. Basically, what you’ll have, is a standard zombie movie. It’s Will Smith in Resident Evil: I Am Legend.
This of course, ignores everything which made the original I Am Legend so fundamentally unique in a sea of pseudo-zombie movies. That made it great is precisely that it skipped over all the standard zombie movie stuff and cut right to the chase, took us right to the place where the world was already over and there’s just one guy left. It’s the loneliness. The despair. So now they’re going back and telling the story of all the things which they skipped to make it good. There’s no way they can duplicate what made I Am Legend great with a prequel. Of course I don’t think they care, as long as it makes money.
