Francis Lawrence Reveals Details For I Am Legend Prequel

A month ago we posted details of what an I Am Legend prequel might look like. Now, SciFi Wire has an interview with Lawrence in which he discusses what he is hoping to achieve with the prequel. Lawrence explained:

“That was the real reason I wanted to do the movie in the first place, really, was the idea of ‘What does that world look like, what does it do to you when you’re by yourself? … What does it do without people, without companionship and sound and the loss of your family, without anybody to talk to? I think that’s really what people connected to, and so the tough thing is, how do we do that again and in a different way?”

He continued, “I think that to go back, there has to be a truly viable reason to go back into that world that I think interested everybody, so that’s the real struggle…The struggle is to find a story that brings us back in a way that’s hopefully just as interesting as the first time around.”

Lawrence is an extremely talented guy but is it just me, or do his comments at this interview reek, ever-so-slightly, of desperation? We’ve said before that the Legend prequel project has always been a film borne out of the box office promise of Will Smith’s involvement. We weren’t exactly hot on the original either, which essentially desecrated the ideas that made Richard Matheson’s original 1954 novel great. When he says “the struggle is to find a story…as interesting as the first time around,” and that it’s just about “trying to come up with something really good,” my first thought is: If you didn’t come up with something really good already, why are you doing this movie? (P.S. I already know the answer, so don’t bother telling me in the comments). Maybe “desperation” isn’t the right word, but like Indy 4, it continues to sound like this film didn’t come about because of some earth-shakingly good plot idea that just had to be put to film.