The time has come once again to think about the tragedy of zombie apocalypses: Akiva Goldsman announced in Deadline that he is working on a sequel to I Am Legend starring Will Smith and Michael B. Jordan that will be significantly The Last of Us–ified. That’s like being yassified, plus pathos and mushroomcore. “This will start a few decades later than the first,†Goldsman said. “I’m obsessed with The Last of Us, where we see the world just postapocalypse but also after a 20-to-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?†He added that the story will hew closer to the Richard Matheson novel than the ending of the 2007 movie. “There will be a little more fidelity to the original text,†Goldsman said.
Spoilers for a 16-year-old movie and a 69-year-old book: The 2007 version of I Am Legend differs wildly from the Matheson novel in its ending and thematic takeaways. Both movie and book focus on Robert Neville, a last-man-on-earth type devoted to killing the undead and/or finding a cure for their disease. In the book and the alternate DVD ending, Neville discovers that the monsters he has been killing indiscriminately are sentient and that he is their monster. He “is legend†among the mutated humans in the same way Jeffrey Dahmer is legend in 21st-century America. (Hopefully without the misaimed fandom.) In the theatrical release, Neville discovers a cure for undeadism and dies in a heroic sacrifice. I’m guessing that since Smith is set to reprise his role opposite Jordan, the sequel will use the DVD’s ending.