By Ryan Parsons | Images property of Warner Bros Pictures.
One book that I have sitting on my desk but have yet to get to it is Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Coming our way this year from Warner Bros, the film has already been placed on most-anticipated lists for 2007. I don't know if it's Will Smith or the vampires, but New York Times has recently attempted to learn more on the project by taking a visit to the film.
Will Smith's I Am Legend
Though we had expected some inside reports from the fim's set, the New York Times spends most of its time reporting on the history of I Am Legend and its significance. Well, at least they provide a cool new still from the film.
Robert Neville, after all, thinks he is the last man alive in a time when a biological plague has created a race of night-crawling human freaks who would like nothing better than to penetrate his sanctuary. As played by Will Smith, he is also one of the few noninfected characters in “I Am Legend,” a Warner Brothers production that has been shooting in New York for release in December.
Directed by Francis Lawrence (“Constantine”) and co-written and co-produced by Akiva Goldsman (an Oscar winner for “A Beautiful Mind”), “I Am Legend” is testimony to the unexpected durability of Richard Matheson’s novel of the same name. It is the third film based on a book whose original impulse was to one-up the screen vampires of an earlier era.
Will Smith in I Am Legend
Both versions took certain liberties with Mr. Matheson’s original concept, largely sidestepping its startlingly prescient, and philosophical, ending: In the book, some vampires have developed a pill that keeps the disease in check and allows them to live relatively normal lives. This element now plays as an AIDS metaphor, though the book was written 30 years before H.I.V. was even identified.
Check out the entire report on I Am Legend over at New York Times.
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