It appears I Am Legend 2 is moving forward at Warner Bros., with reports indicating Transformers: Rise of the Beasts director Steven Caple Jr. is officially developing the sequel.
I Am Legend is a 2007 post-apocalyptic action-thriller loosely based on the 1954 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. It stars Will Smith as Robert Neville, a U.S. Army virologist who is seemingly the last human survivor in New York City after a man-made virus turns humanity into zombie-vampire hybrid. Immune to the plague, Neville works to find a cure while battling extreme isolation and hostile creatures.
Collider said that while interviewing Steven Caple Jr. on Netflix's Man on Fire remake, the director behind The Land and Creed II “confirmed he is officially developing I Am Legend 2 for Warner Bros. in addition to a handful of projects for Paramount.”
This is the first meaningful update we’ve had on I Am Legend 2 since 2024, when sinners star Michael B. Jordan said that while the script for I Am Legend 2 was still unfinished, he was "really excited" to work with Will Smith when cameras eventually started rolling.
Smith had told Entertainment Tonight that development on the sequel was coming together and "looking good," adding: "[We have some] really solid ideas… I think [Michael and I are] going to make it on screen together. That dude is the truth, so I would love to do that."
Oscar-winning writer-producer Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote I Am Legend with Mark Protosevich, was said to be set to return to pen the sequel's script. The story will apparently feature a significant time jump, with the alternate ending to the first film — in which Smith’s character survives — treated as canon.
In a 2023 conversation with Deadline, Goldsman said: "This will start a few decades later than the first. 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," Goldsman continued. "What Matheson was talking about was that man's time on the planet as the dominant species had come to an end. That's a really interesting thing we're going to get to explore. There will be a little more fidelity to the original text."
Photo credit: ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
