I Am Legend was released in 2007 to positive reviews and an impressive $585 million worldwide. More than a decade and a half later, the movie still has a great many fans, but the ending seen in theaters still doesn't sit right with some of them.
In that, Will Smith's Robert Neville used a grenade to stop the vampire-like Darkseekers so his fellow survivors, Anna and Ethan, could escape with a cure. He did so at the cost of his own life and was later hailed as a great hero.
However, an alternate version included in the movie's DVD release revealed that the Darkseekers weren't mindless monsters and that Neville was the true villain for capturing and experimenting on them. After returning one of them to its people, the scientist abandoned his quest for a cure and left to find other survivors while dealing with the guilt over what he'd done.
Talking to Josh Horowitz (via SFFGazette.com), I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence admitted he regrets delivering a safer ending and wishes he'd kept the movie more in line with Richard Matheson's bleaker 1954 novel.
"I prefer the original ending to the two that we have," he says. "But the truth is now I would’ve built it do be able to do the ending from the novella, truly just do that story. But with the money being spent, everybody was nervous about doing something so nihilistic."
"But looking back I feel like everybody went to see The Last Man on Earth and enjoyed it for that reason and would’ve still enjoyed [I Am Legend] with the nihilistic ending."
Smith is now expected to eventually return to the franchise and, based on recent reports, will star in and produce the sequel alongside Michael B. Jordan. The prevailing theory is that Smith will pass the torch to his co-star, setting the stage for a new series of movies set in this world.
Whether the plan is to retcon the original ending or for him to only appear in flashbacks isn't clear.
"This will start a few decades later than the first," writer Akiva Goldsman revealed earlier this year. "I’m obsessed with The Last of Us, where we see the world just post-apocalypse but also after a 20-30-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. We trace back to the original Matheson book, and the alternate ending as opposed to the released ending in the original film."
"What Matheson was talking about was that man’s time on the planet as the dominant species had come to an end," Goldsman added. "That’s a really interesting thing we’re going to get to explore. There will be a little more fidelity to the original text."
The I Am Legend sequel doesn't have a confirmed release date. You can watch the full interview with Lawrence below.