Hollywood really wanted to make I Am Legend 2, starring Will Smith. Even though he died in the first one. Fortunately, this never happened — but producer and writer Akiva Goldsman was happy to share the many failed ideas they had for an I Am Legend prequel and/or sequel. Warning: These ideas are all totally batshit insane.
We sat down with Winter’s Tale director and longtime Hollywood blockbuster maker Akiva Goldsman, to chat about his adaptation of Mark Helprin’s novel. But before we get to that, we also checked in on Goldsman’s many movie projects, including getting a tiny update on Dark Tower and all the details on the failed I Am Legend 2 drafts.
There are a lot of projects you’re working on that our readers are really excited about. Dark Tower kind of seems like it’s stuck in the ether of Hollywood, what’s going on with that right now?
Akiva Goldsman: Dark Tower really is in the ether of Hollywood. We continue to turn it over. We are definitely in the “never say die” mode. Roland has managed to keep walking for a long time and I don’t want him to fall down on our watch.
There was talk of an I Am Legend 2 ?
Never.
There was never talk of it?
Oh no no, [there was] never a movie. I mean, we wrote a prequel [and] a sequel. We had a really interesting prequel, which was the first outbreak of the virus, during a Thanksgiving Day parade, which was awesome. We did a really interesting prequel that [took place] later. Which was right after the first… really right when the population of of humans became pretty decimated. And it was this sort of trek to Washington. Which included a dark seeker elephant that had broken out of the zoo.
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Then we did a sequel, that started with Neville again — and you realized that he was cloned. We’ve tried every which way. In fact if you’re available you could be in the next movie. It will never happen but we really enjoyed trying to make it happen.
I like the idea of the bloody Macy’s Day Parade, it’s cool that you guys pitched ideas.
Oh we tried. There were scripts. We really tried.
And there you have it. More on Goldsman’s Winter’s Tale tomorrow.
