I Am Legend prequel from Will Smith

Apparently Will Smith and others are dreaming up a prequel to the awful movie version of I Am Legend.

The 1954 book by Richard Matheson is one of my all-time favourites. It’s a great mix of horror and sci-fi in the old school style and it’s a truly great story. The reason for the title of I Am Legend is inspired. Will Smith’s movie version crapped all over that.

The movie wasn’t that bad to begin with, a reasonably updated version of Matheson’s book, but the last third of the film or so became a horrible steaming pile of American god-loving bollocks, completely desecrating the original point of the story. And the CG vampires were bloody terrible. As you can tell, I wasn’t very impressed with it.

And now Smith wants to make a prequel? Even after the flashbacks in the first film that told us the story of what happened? Even if we know that basically everyone will die and vamp out and Dr Richard Neville (Smith) will be left alone in the world, supposedly. Even though we know that the story ends atrociously because Smith et al couldn’t bring themselves to stick to Matheson’s story and make a truly great film?

Way to go, Will – you’re about to make one of the worst movie adaptations ever even worse.

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