Yahoo News I Am Legend sequel will be inspired by The Last of Us , says writer-producer
HBO's The Last of Us is having a lasting impact, not just on viewers (check the ratings) but on other creatives.
The sequel to 2007's I Am Legend will be inspired by the post-apocalyptic not-zombie drama, says writer-producer Akiva Goldsman, who is working on the movie with Will Smith and Michael B. Jordan.
"This will start a few decades later than the first," Goldsman told Deadline in an interview. "I'm obsessed with The Last of Us, where we see the world just post-apocalypse 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? 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."
Based on the critically acclaimed 2013 hit video game, The Last of Us takes place 20 years after a fungal pandemic caused by an evolved form of cordyceps that hijack the infected's brains and re-engineer them into zombielike mutant creatures. (But they're not zombies, dammit!) What follows is the post-apocalyptic odyssey of Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened survivor scarred by the death of his daughter years earlier, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenager mysteriously immune to the plague that has irrevocably changed civilization.
Barry Wetcher S.M.P.S.P./Warner Bros.; Liane Hentscher/HBO The 'I Am Legend' sequel will be inspired by 'The Last of Us.'
I Am Legend, based on the 1954 Richard Matheson novel, is set in a world where a virus, caused by failed attempts to cure cancer, transforms its infected into vampiric mutants. Robert Neville (Smith) is a U.S. Army virologist and the last-surviving human New Yorker.
Goldsman told Deadline that the alternate ending shot for the film is the one he's using as a launchpad for the sequel.
The theatrical release of I Am Legend featured Robert killing himself in order to preserve the vaccine he developed after curing a woman infected. The alternate ending, which plays out closer to Matheson's book, shows a group of the infected attacking Robert's hideout to rescue the infected woman. Robert learns that she's the mate of the alpha male at the head of the pack and surrenders her, realizing he's seen as the mad-doctor villain in the eyes of the infected. He then leaves behind his work and goes in search of a survivors camp in Vermont.
"We trace back to the original Matheson book and the alternate ending as opposed to the released ending in the original film," Goldsman said. "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."
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