I Am Legend (film) - New reboot

[Neil]

http://deadline.com/2014/10/i-am-leg...-smith-844507/ Let's just hope it's better than Will Smith's attempt. It was OK, but a bit too Hollywood for my liking.

[shootemindehead]

I honestly do not know how any producer can get this wrong. The screenplay is practically already written.

[Neil]

I honestly do not know how any producer can get this wrong. The screenplay is practically already written. See World War Z as a tour de force in this

[RichW]

See World War Z as a tour de force in this Aye, +1 to this. Or, as my dear old nan would have said - 'You can lead a fool to knowledge, but you can't make them think' P.S. That isn't aimed at you, Shootem - but the producers, who do have an uncanny knack of fouling good material up!

[Legion2213]

I enjoyed the Will Smith version enough to buy it on BD...admittedly, I don't have exacting standards, but it was an enjoyable movie IMO.

[MoonSylver]

Reading the article, sounds horrible. They bought someone else's post-apoc script with a "The Searchers" slant & now are going to re-tool it as an "I Am Legend" reboot? Just make the fucking book please.

[Legion2213]

Reading the article, sounds horrible. They bought someone else's post-apoc script with a "The Searchers" slant & now are going to re-tool it as an "I Am Legend" reboot? Just make the fucking book please. Doesn't the book include "zombie/vampire feeding factories" where they keep humans as livestock and the like? Long time since I've read it (well, listened to it on audio book). That scene alone would look pretty damn awesome on film!

[MoonSylver]

Doesn't the book include "zombie/vampire feeding factories" where they keep humans as livestock and the like? Long time since I've read it (well, listened to it on audio book). That scene alone would look pretty damn awesome on film! Not that I recall. It seems like in the end they had started synthesizing blood? Been a long while since I read it as well. Maybe 20 years now...

[shootemindehead]

See World War Z as a tour de force in this Ah well, there's a difference there. The producers took Brooks' book and used it to prop up a coffee table, then proceeded to write something completely from scratch with a title somebody vaguely remembered seeing somewhere. - - - Updated - - - Aye, +1 to this. Or, as my dear old nan would have said - 'You can lead a fool to knowledge, but you can't make them think' P.S. That isn't aimed at you, Shootem - but the producers, who do have an uncanny knack of fouling good material up! I agree, but I suppose my point was that I'm surprised at how many times 'I am Legend' has been fouled up, when Matheson's novella is practically a screenplay already. You really have to go out of your way to make a balls of it. But yeh, there are few really well done adaptations of well loved books.

[MinionZombie]

I agree, but I suppose my point was that I'm surprised at how many times 'I am Legend' has been fouled up, when Matheson's novella is practically a screenplay already. You really have to go out of your way to make a balls of it. Agreed. Three attempts so far and none of them have been good enough to be worthy of the book. The Last Man On Earth was perhaps the closest in some ways, but it just didn't have enough cash or tech behind it ... The Omega Man is good and cheesy fun, but it's fairly wide of the mark at times, although it's the most overall fun flick of the three ... and I Am Legend ... ... christ, what a bugger up that movie was. There's some good stuff in there, but it's way too slick, and goes out of its way to ignore the source text (and completely crumbles at the half-way point). I agree with you - the book is prime for a fairly straight adaptation from the page to the silver screen. It really shouldn't be this hard to get a good movie out of I Am Legend. Good luck to Gary Graham though (the writer). He's getting to make a career out of doing what he loves and he's made the right choice to adapt his script into an IAL reboot ... whether it's the right choice from Warner Bros' perspective in terms of the "franchise" remains to be seen. I'm hoping that we'll get something good out of it. Perhaps they're not keen on essentially doing what would be a fourth attempt to adapt the book and just thought "let's do our own story within that world" ... perhaps it'll work out. So yeah, all the best to Gary Graham. I hope he pulls it off.

[Neil]

The Omega Man is good and cheesy fun, but it's fairly wide of the mark at times, although it's the most overall fun flick of the three ... I love The Omega Man. It's got that really dark pessimistic vibe that only the 70s/80s could seemingly produce. Infact my story "The Midas Touch" pays homage to it in one little scene with a Tv presenter's dialogue.

[EvilNed]

I liked the Will Smith version. The whole part about the vaccine and the other humans was a mess - you can't just remove the biggest part of the book (him being the last human) like that. However it was fairly uncompromising in it's stance towards what losses you would face in an apocalyptic scenario. Neville's family dies in front of his eyes, and the bit about the dog was great too.

[bassman]

I enjoyed the latest film version, but as others have said, it fails as a translation of the source material. Overall it was a fun enough time at the movies, even with it's issues. Smith's acting probably being the best aspect of the whole film... As for the next attempt at IAL, I have extremely low expectations. With Frank Darabont recently dabbling in the horror genre and bigger pictures(TWD, Godzilla, upcoming Snow White & Huntsman sequel), it'd be very interesting if they were to get him as writer/director....

[Trin]

I'd like to see a decent, relatively faithful adaptation of I Am Legend. The Will Smith version wasn't an awful movie, but it wasn't Legend. You can't replace the guy who insists on carrying spare tires, batteries and fuel for his car with someone who drives at breakneck speeds shooting deer out the window. At that point you just aren't telling the same story. I see a lot of comparison between adaptations of Legend vs. adaptations of WWZ. Personally, I think that I Am Legend is a stronger story than WWZ and thus it is harder to make something big screen that measures up. Put another way, I wasn't horribly disappointed with the WWZ movie mainly because I wasn't horribly in love with the WWZ storyline. What they need to do is stop and think about what made the Legend storyline so compelling. And stop translating everything into action scenes. Horror is not about action.

[wayzim]

Not that I recall. It seems like in the end they had started synthesizing blood? Been a long while since I read it as well. Maybe 20 years now... The synth blood was a way for the new society to feed the disease without succumbing entirely. It was a compromise measure which still kept them human for a time. But still, they were altered enough that Neville had become more of a threat than the vampires themselves. The factory angle was not from I Am Legend, the book. As far as Neville & these hybrids knew, there were no other humans to collect. However, in the 1979 film: Thirst http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080016/, a Countess Bathory cult used people as cattle. Likewise, in my zombie/vampire story; Preservation of A Species( HPOTD fiction, 2000), my vampire society had started to collect humans in various safe zones.