Trivia / I Am Legend

• Ability over Appearance: Anna was written to be American, but Alice Braga was the only person producers wanted for the role.
• Budget-Busting Element: The film spent about $5 million alone on the bridge collapse scene, due to a combination of expensive CGI and the extensive costs and bureaucracy of shooting a destructive action scene on-location in New York City. The scene lasts less than 30 seconds.
• Defictionalization: At one point there is a billboard for a Superman/Batman crossover film^note An actual Batman/Superman film had been in Development Hell for about fifteen years at that point. Fast forward to 2016, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has been released, and Will Smith became a part of that cinematic universe.
• Executive Meddling: Like you wouldn't believe, which resulted in the generic 'kill-them-all' Heroic Sacrifice theatrical ending. The ending was focused grouped to hell and back again and resulted in most of the foreshadowing regarding the intelligence of the Darkseekers and the fact that Neville's current test subject is the mate of the Alpha Darkseeker who just wants her returned to the pack completely pointless and made the ending seem rushed and confused. Thankfully the original ending was included in the DVD bonus features.
• Focus Group Ending: The film massively changed the original ending, which was closer to the novella. In the original ending, Neville has a Heel Realization. This twist was averted in the new ending into a Heroic Sacrifice, basically the exact opposite of what the novel did and what the rest of the film was building up to. Several plot details hinting at the original ending remain in the film.
• Follow the Leader: Both Stephen King and George Romero were fans of Matheson's work, and acknowledged this book's influence on 'Salem's Lot and Night of the Living Dead (1968) respectively.
• Life Imitates Art: The empty streets in the film are said to be reminiscent of the lockdowns at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Orphaned Reference: In the original novella, the title I Am Legend refers to Neville's reputation among the sapient vampires as The Dreaded. The film removes the entire element of the Darkseekers being sapient but keeps that title. To make it worse, the first version of the ending included the reference, making it only lost in what became the the theatrical release.
• Real-Life Relative: Will Smith's daughter, Willow Smith, plays his daughter in the movie.
• Saved from Development Hell:
  • Ridley Scott planned an adaptation in 1998 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The studio's art direction and special effects workers had even begun working on a design for the apocalyptic mutant creatures. However, some high-profile big-budget failures for Warner Bros., and the huge (for that time) initial budget of 125 million dollars, led to the project being put into turnaround. If the film had been made from Mark Protosevich's original screenplay, it would have differed from the final version in three major ways: it was to be set in the Bay Area of California, it would have been more of an action film, and less of a drama, and it would have been filmed with the intent of being R-rated.
  • The sequel was announced, but never entered into the pre-production stage. Then the movie's screenwriter Akiva Goldsman's production company made a deal with Warner Brothers and revived the project.
• Spared by the Cut: The theatrical cut sees Neville die in a blaze of glory taking out the zombies so that the other human survivors can live. The original cut of the film had him not die, but instead find out that the zombies aren't the mindless beasts that he thought they were, and instead realize that he might be the true monster. This change meant a boatload of foreshadowing in the theatrical cut ultimately went nowhere.
• Stillborn Franchise: There were plans for a prequel, but the film-makers could never find a story that worked. Some of the ideas that were bandied about include a road picture prequel, taking place on a trip to Washington D.C., that would have involved a zombie elephant, and an outbreak during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. They also considered a straight up sequel, with Will Smith playing the clone of his character from the first film. A sequel has been announced, so time will tell if it gets made. Then in February 2023, it is announced that screenwriter Akiva Goldsman's production company Weed Road made a first-look deal with Warner Brothers and restarted the sequel project with Will Smith reprising (by picking up from the original ending that's closer to the original story) and Michael B. Jordan possibly co-starring.
• Uncredited Role: Emma Thompson has an uncredited role as Dr. Alice Krippin, who appears on television explaining her vaccine for cancer that mutates into the virus.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Before rewrites turned it into an action thriller and then getting stuck in the Development Hell for years, the initial pitch for the script version from the 90s was focused almost entirely on how dehumanising the experience of being the last human could be, digging deeper into the conclusion of the famous Title Drop.
  • Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage, Michael Douglas, Mel Gibson, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Ted Levine were considered to star over the years the film was in development. Kurt Russell was once considered to star in the late 1990s, but after the failure of Soldier, he was no longer considered.
  • To say nothing about the fact the 90s script was originally written with Arnold Schwarzenegger in mind and he was for a while involved in the project.
  • Will Smith wanted Guillermo del Toro to direct, but he was busy with Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
  • In 1999, in an early point in development, Tim Burton was interested in the project.
  • Michael Bay was set to direct at one stage, but he and Smith did Bad Boys II instead.
  • Zack Snyder was also set to direct it at one point.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The film was green-lit without a script. The script that was used as a pitch to the studio (mentioned above under Saved from Development Hell) got scrapped and the production started without having an actual replacement.

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