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Monday
24Nov2008

'I Am Legend' Prequel Now a Sequel?

DateMonday, November 24, 2008 at 11:52PM
Although Ain't It Cool News has a great track record with reporting stories before they become well-established facts, they've whiffed on quite a few, as well. So when that site says it's reporting a story from an untested source, you should definitely weigh this one appropriately.

We know there will be another I Am Legend movie. The apocalyptic Will Smith flick made too much moolah not to at least consider a follow-up. The great thing about I Am Legend is that both a sequel and a prequel are practical. You can see where civilization was before the events of the movie we've seen, and you can see how civilization re-integrates following those events. I'm not saying they'd make great movies, but you wouldn't have to think too hard to plot an outline. Or outline a plot.

The prequel is the more appealing story, because it has so much more conflict and drama. And according to Westood9, the new Ain't It Cool source, the prequel idea was even more interesting than we would've thought.

"Smith is actually the one who developed the initial story. It took place several years before the original film and there were still pockets of survivors and the story centered around Smith interacting, bonding, and ultimately failing to save them. For months this was the story. Warner's didn't much care for it and Smith and [writer D.B. Weiss] eventually came on board and all parties agreed to change things up."

By "change things up," Westwood means convert a prequel into a sequel. That would obviously change the ending of I Am Legend, because Smith signed up for the next movie and...uh...he didn't look like sequel material at the end of the first one.

If it's true, I think it's a bad idea. Maybe it's not a terrible idea to make a sequel, but to make it now instead of the prequel (which has a pretty good concept for the central character) means that a prequel is utterly useless. You can't go back and do it last. What's the point?

Again, nobody can really test the veracity of this story, but I hope Warner Bros. - which just scored the second biggest hit of all time with an incredibly dark story - wouldn't think audiences would rather see the bright, sunshiny side of this story over a much better prequel.

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AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

Will Smith's character would be dead in a sequel.

I guess they could merge it with the Ghostbusters sequel.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterLengthy Johnson

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