Earning $585 million worldwide seven years ago, Warner Bros. really tried hard to get a sequel to "I Am Legend" off the ground. But while there might have been excitement at the studio level, there was a constant roadblock in form of the always picky Will Smith. "Producers are working on it. I’m not actually. If it’s great, I’m into it,” the actor said a couple of years ago, adding: “I don’t want to be the sequel guy. I figure I’ve got about six or seven more years where I can run and jump a little bit and then I’m going butt and gut for the rest of my career. Butt and gut.” So WB has decided to give up on Smith and start over.
Deadline reports that the studio is reworking "A Garden At The End Of The World," a spec script they picked up in April, and fashioning it into a new version of "I Am Legend." So there’s your reboot. This is not an unusual practice in Hollywood, and no matter what it’s great news for screenwriter Gary Graham who had been previously working at an Apple store in New York City before crossing his fingers and posting his script to the Black List site, where it drew him enough buzz to land an agent.
The original script is described as a sci-fi twist on "The Searchers," but it will now be redrafted by Graham for reboot purposes. Previously, the studio tried to go down the prequel road, hiring Arash Amel ("Erased," "Grace Of Monaco") to write a script, but obviously that stalled out somewhere along the way. So might as well go back to square one, right? And that means bringing back Akiva Goldsman and all the producers of the original to make sure the new "I Am Legend" is just as successful (but hopefully not the same) as the last one.
