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· Year: 2003?
· Director: Michael Bay
· Writer: Mark Protosevich, Richard Matheson (book)
· Cast: Will Smith
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· Based on I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson, previously adapted into The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man. |
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Amazon.com
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| Synopsis |
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After a mysterious plague decimates the earth and turns the few survivors into vampires, Robert Neville--perhaps the last human on earth--must hunt them by day and barricade himself against them in his home by night, waiting for the dawn.
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March 18, 2002: I've read Mark Protosevich's script for I Am Legend, and while it was exciting and interesting, it crystallizes the major difficulty in bringing Richard Matheson's classic to the screen. Any movie that wanted to be faithful to the tone of the book would have to allow periods of quiet that are just out of place in your usual summer blockbuster. So the script plays like the book on steroids. I can live with that, I suppose. Excerpts from a March 18, 2002 article from BASELINE Inc. and Cahners Business Information:
'LEGEND' REKINDLED BY ARNOLD
Michael Fleming
The post-apocalyptic drama "I Am Legend" has re-emerged on a fast track at Warner Bros.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has become the film's producer, and WB and Schwarzenegger are commencing negotiations with Oscar nominee Will Smith to star and Michael Bay ("Pearl Harbor") to direct.
[ . . . ]
Schwarzenegger had long been attached to star in "Legend," which once had Ridley Scott set to direct. Scripted by Mark Protosevich, the film is an adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel that takes place in L.A. after a biological war and pits the last man on Earth against the populace of nocturnal mutants bent on rendering him extinct. The project halted in late 1997 because of WB concerns over a budget that hovered around $125 million, which seemed like a lot of money back then. But the story, which was done twice before as "The Last Man on Earth" and Charlton Heston starrer "The Omega Man," has always been a passion of WB prexy Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
An attempt was made to redraft the drama to be a bit less pricey, and it attracted Bay and Smith, whose CAA reps are also negotiating for them to reteam with Martin Lawrence in "Bad Boys 2" at Columbia, with Ron Shelton doing a rewrite. Nothing happened until Schwarzenegger, who has been as passionate about the project as di Bonaventura, agreed to change his role in the production.
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