I Am Legend - production notes

I Am Legend (film) This article is about the 2007 film starring Will Smith taken from Richard Matheson's novel, see I Am Legend. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I Am Legend Directed by Produced by

Francis Lawrence

Music by

Akiva Goldsman David Heyman James Lassiter Neal H. Moritz Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman Mark Protosevich Novel: Richard Matheson Will Smith Alice Braga Salli Richardson Willow Smith Charlie Tahan James Newton Howard

Cinematography

Andrew Lesnie

Editing by

Wayne Wahrman

Studio

Village Roadshow

Written by

Starring

Pictures Weed Road Pictures Overbrook Entertainment

Original theatrical release poster

Distributed by

Warner Bros.

Release date(s)

December 14, 2007

Running time

Theatrical cut: 100 min.

Alternate cut: 104 min

Country

United States

Language

English

Budget

$150,000,000

Gross revenue

$585,349,010[1]

I Am Legend is a 2007 post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Will Smith. It is the third feature film adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the same name, following 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man. Smith plays virologist Robert Neville, who is immune to a vicious man-made virus originally created to cure cancer. He works to create a cure while living in Manhattan in 2012, a city inhabited by animalistic victims of the virus.

Warner Bros. began developing I Am Legend in 1994, and various actors and directors were attached to the project, though production was delayed due to budgetary concerns related to

the script. Production began in 2006 in New York City, filming mainly on location in the city, including a $5 million scene[3] at the Brooklyn Bridge, the most expensive scene ever filmed in the city at the time. Warner Bros. launched a tie-in comic and an online multiplayer game on Second Life as part of its marketing campaign. I Am Legend was released on December 14, 2007 in the United States. It opened to the largest ever box office for a non-Christmas film released in the U.S. in December. The film's commercial success "cemented [Smith's] standing as the number one box office draw in Hollywood." [4]

Plot The film opens in 2009 with a televised news broadcast with Dr. Krippen (Emma Thompson) who has created a cure for cancer (100% cure rate) by altering the measles virus.

In a post-apocalyptic 2012, U.S. Army virologist, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville (Will Smith) is left as the last healthy human in New York City and possibly the entire world.

A series of flashbacks and past and recorded news programs reveal that a genetically re-engineered measles virus created in 2009 as a cure for cancer mutated into a lethal airborne strain that spread worldwide and killed 5.4 billion people, 90% of humanity.

Only 12 million possessed a natural immunity. The remaining 588 million degenerated into primal, aggressive beings referred to as "Darkseekers" (the DVD subtitles refer to them as hemocytes) who have a painful intolerance to UV radiation, forcing them to hide in buildings and other dark places during the day. The "Darkseekers" exhibit superhuman speed, agility, and strength. They also retain some problem-solving intelligence and the capacity to organize.

The immune regular humans were hunted, killed by other humans, killed by the infected, or committed suicide.

Neville's daily routine includes experimentation to find a cure for the virus and trips through a Manhattan devoid of humanity to hunt for food and supplies. He also waits each day for a response to his continuous recorded radio broadcasts, which instruct any uninfected survivors to meet him at midday at the South Street Seaport. Flashbacks reveal that his wife (Salli Richardson) and daughter Marley apparently died in a helicopter accident during the chaotic evacuation of Manhattan, prior to the military-enforced quarantine of the island in 2009.

Neville's isolation is broken only by the companionship of his dog Samantha ("Sam"), interaction with mannequins he has set up as patrons of a video store, and recordings of old news and entertainment broadcasts.

Neville sets a snare trap and captures an infected woman. An infected male (who later would seem to be the Alpha Male in his group of infected) roars at Neville from the building, exposing himself for a few seconds to sunlight, something Neville regards as unusual since direct sunlight causes the creatures to burn. Back in his laboratory, located in the basement of his heavily fortified Washington Square Park home, Neville attempts to treat the infected woman without success. Shortly thereafter, he is ensnared in a trap after investigating a mannequin posed in the street. Caught in the trap he passes out. By the time Neville wakes up it is dusk and when Neville finally gets free, the Alpha Male releases a pack of infected dogs to attack him, one of which bites Sam (although dogs are unaffected by the airborne strain of the virus, they are still affected by the contact strain). After Neville and Sam manage to kill the dogs, Neville takes the wounded Sam back to his lab. Sam tries to bite him, and Neville is forced to strangle and kill his dog. Later that night, after Sam's funeral, he recklessly attacks a group of infected in an attempt to end his life and in revenge for what happened to Sam. They overwhelm Neville and nearly kill him, but he is rescued by a pair of immune survivors, Anna

(Alice Braga) and a young boy named Ethan (Charlie Tahan), who have traveled from Maryland after hearing one of his broadcasts. They take the injured Neville back to his home where Anna explains that they survived the outbreak aboard a Red Cross evacuation ship from São Paulo and are making their way to a putative survivors' camp in Bethel, Vermont. Anna tells Neville that she believes God has a plan for them. Neville goes into a rage and argues that there are no survivors, no God and that "everybody is dead."

Neville attempts to lower the infected woman's body temperature so the cure can take effect.

That night, the Alpha Male leads a group of infected in an attack on the house, having followed Anna and Neville back the night before. They overrun its defenses and force Neville, Anna, and Ethan to retreat into the basement laboratory. They seal themselves in with the infected woman, where they discover that Neville's treatment is working. By now Neville has worked out a cure for the virus and takes a sample of the infected females blood, containing the treatment, and gives a vial of it to Anna, telling her that she's right and God has a plan. He pushes Anna and Ethan into an old coal chute, and then sacrifices himself to save their lives, using a hand grenade to kill himself and the attacking infected.

Anna and Ethan escape to Vermont, and locate the survivor's colony, where Anna hands over the cure. In the closing voice-over, she states that Neville's cure enabled humanity to survive and rebuild, thus establishing his legend.

Alternate ending The tone of the film's ending was altered before the film's release, especially the stand-off between Neville and the infected in his laboratory. Visual effects supervisor Janek Sirrs recounts the original ending starting with the stand-off: "At that point, Neville's—and the audience's—assumptions about the nature of these creatures are shown to be incorrect. We see that they have actually retained some of their humanity. There is a very important moment between the Alpha Male and Neville. The Alpha Male slapped his hand on the glass and smeared it revealing a butterfly shaped imprint." Neville realizes that the Alpha Male is identifying the infected woman he was experimenting on by a butterfly tattoo, and that the Alpha Male wants her back. Demonstrating that he will cease fighting and return her, Neville is allowed to approach them, with the Alpha Male ordering the infected not to touch him. Neville brings the Alpha Female back to consciousness, still infected due to him having removed the cure, and the Alpha Male embraces her; David Schaub stated, "Then, when Neville finally turns the Alpha Female over to the Alpha Male, there is this little love moment between the two of them." Neville and the Alpha Male then exchange stares; Neville apologizes to them, which the Alpha Male acknowledges before the infected leave. He then looks at the photos of the infected he has experimented on and killed and realizes that he is the monster of their legends; the infected think of him as someone who hunts down and kills their people. The original final shot follows Neville, Anna, and Ethan as they cross the remnants of the George Washington Bridge in hopes of finding other survivors, accompanied by a recording from Anna telling possible survivors that there is hope, and Neville knows the compounds of the cure, meaning he can recreate it and help humanity survive and rebuild, thus establishing his legend. [5]

Cast • • • •

Will Smith - Robert Neville Emma Thompson - Dr. Krippen Alice Braga - Anna Charlie Tahan - Ethan

• • • • • •

Salli Richardson - Zoe Neville Abbey and Kona - Sam the Dog Dash Mihok - Infected Alpha Male Joanna Numata - Infected Alpha Female Pat Fraley - President (voice) Mike Patton - Creature Vocal Effects

Production Development The early 1990s brought a reemergence of the science fiction horror genre.[6] In 1995, Warner Bros. began developing the film project, having owned the rights to Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend since 1970[7] and The Omega Man (1971). Mark Protosevich was hired to write the script after the studio was impressed with his spec script of The Cell (2000).

Protosevich's first draft took place in the year 2000 in San Francisco, California, and contained many similarities with the finished film, though Ann was a morphine addict. Warner Bros. immediately put the film on fast track, attaching Neal H. Moritz as producer.[6] Actors Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas,[8] Mel Gibson[6] had been considered to star in the film,[8] using a script by Protosevich and with Ridley Scott as director; however, by June 1997 the studio's preference was for actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and in July, Scott and Schwarzenegger finalized negotiations,[9] with production slated to begin the coming September,[8] using Houston as a stand-in for the film's setting of Los Angeles.[10] Scott had Protosevich replaced by a screenwriter of his own choosing, John Logan, with whom he spent months of intensive work on a number of different drafts. The Scott/Logan version of I Am Legend was a bold, artistic mash of scifi action and psychological thriller, without dialogue in the first hour and with a sombre ending. [6] The studio, fearing its lack of commercial appeal and merchandising potential, began to worry about the liberties they had given Scott - then on a negative streak of box office disapointments - and urged the production team to reconsider the lack of action in the screenplay. After an "esoteric" draft by writer Neal Jimenez, Warner Bros. reassigned Protosevich to the project, reluctantly working with Ridley Scott again.[6] In December 1997, the project was called into question when the projected budget escalated to $108 million due to media and shareholder scrutiny of the studio in financing a big-budget film.[11] Scott rewrote the script in an attempt to reduce the film's budget by $20 million, [12] but in March 1998, the studio canceled the project due to continued budgetary concerns [13], and quite possibly to the box office dissapointment of Scott's last three films, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, White Squall and G.I. Jane.[6] Likewise, Schwarzenegger's recent films at the time (Eraser and Warner Bros. own Batman & Robin) underperformed, and the studio's latest experiences with big budget scifi movies Sphere and The Postman were negative as well.[6] In August 1998, director Rob Bowman was attached to the project,[14] with Protosevich hired to write a third all new draft, far more action-oriented than his previous versions [6], but the director (who reportedly wished for Nicolas Cage to play the lead) moved on to direct Reign of Fire[15] and the project did not get off the ground.

In March 2002, Schwarzenegger became the producer of I Am Legend, commencing negotiations with Michael Bay to direct and Will Smith to star in the film.[16] Bay and Smith were attracted to the project based on a redraft that would reduce its budget. [17] However, the project was shelved due to Warner Bros. president, Alan F. Horn's dislike of the script.[18] In 2004,

Akiva Goldsman was asked by head of production Jeff Robinov to produce the film. [19] In September 2005, director Francis Lawrence signed on to helm the project, with production slated to begin in 2006. Guillermo del Toro was originally approached to direct by Smith but turned it down in order to direct Hellboy II: The Golden Army.[20] Lawrence, whose film Constantine was produced by Goldsman, was fascinated by empty urban environments. He said, "Something's always really excited me about that... to have experienced that much loss, to be without people or any kind of social interaction for that long." [19] Goldsman took on the project as he admired the second I Am Legend film adaptation, The Omega Man.[21] A rewrite was done to distance the project from the other zombie films inspired by the novel,[16] particularly 28 Days Later.[21] A forty-page scene-by-scene outline of the film was developed by May 2006. When delays occurred on Will Smith's film Hancock (2008), which was scheduled for 2007, it was proposed to switch the actor's films. This meant filming would have to begin in sixteen weeks: production was green lit, using Goldsman's script and the outline.[19] Elements from Protosevich's script were introduced, while the crew consulted with experts on infectious diseases and solitary confinement.[21] Rewrites continued throughout filming, because of Smith's improvisational skills and Lawrence's preference to keep various scenes silent.[19] The director had watched Jane Campion’s film The Piano with a low volume so as to not disturb his newborn son, and realized that silence could be very effective cinema.[22]

[edit] Casting Will Smith signed on to play Robert Neville in April 2006. [23] He said he took on I Am Legend because he felt it could be like "Gladiator [or] Forrest Gump—these are movies with wonderful, audience-pleasing elements but also uncompromised artistic value. [This] always felt like it had those possibilities to me."[21] The actor found Neville to be his toughest acting challenge since portraying Muhammad Ali in Ali (2001). He said that "when you're on your own, it is kind of hard to find conflict." The film's dark tone and exploration of whether Neville has gone insane during his isolation meant Smith had to restrain himself from falling into a humorous routine during takes.[24] *To prepare for his role, Smith visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Georgia. He also met with a person who had been in solitary confinement and a former prisoner of war.[25] Smith compared Neville to Job, who lost his children, livelihood and health. Like the Book of Job, I Am Legend studies the questions, "Can he find a reason to continue? Can he find the hope or desire to excel and advance in life? Or does the death of everything around him create imminent death for himself?" [16] He also cited an influence in Tom Hanks' performance in Cast Away (2000)

*Reference to micro element Performance: Method Acting or the Method School of acting or Stanislavski technique Abbey, a three-year-old German Shepherd Dog, played Neville's dog Sam. Another dog, Kona, was used for scenes where Neville plays fetch with his companion, as Abbey refused to perform these scenes.[26] The rest of the supporting cast consists of Salli Richardson as Zoe, Robert's wife,[27] and Alice Braga as a survivor named Anna.[27] Willow Smith, Will Smith's daughter, makes her film debut as Marley, Neville's daughter. [28] Emma Thompson has an uncredited role as Dr. Alice Krippin, who appears on television explaining her vaccine for cancer that mutates into the virus.[29] Singer Mike Patton provided the guttural screams of the infected "hemocytes," and Dash Mihok provided the character animation for the "Alpha Male" infected. There were several filler characters with uncredited roles in old news broadcasts and flashbacks, such as the unnamed President's voice, and the cast of The Today Show.

[edit] Filming

The Brooklyn Bridge served as a location in I Am Legend, at which there was a $5 million scene filmed, the most expensive scene to date in New York City.

Akiva Goldsman decided to move the story from Los Angeles to New York City to take advantage of locations that would more easily show emptiness. [7] Goldsman explained, "L.A. looks empty at three o'clock in the afternoon, [but] New York is never empty . . . it was a much more interesting way of showing the windswept emptiness of the world." [24] Warner Bros. initially rejected this idea because of the logistics, [19] but Francis Lawrence was determined to shoot on location, to give the film a natural feel that would benefit from not shooting on soundstages. Lawrence went to the city with a camcorder, and filmed areas filled with crowds.

Then, a special effects test was conducted to remove all those people. The test had a powerful effect on studio executives.[22] Michael Tadross convinced authorities to close busy areas such as the Grand Central Terminal viaduct, several blocks of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square Park.[19] The film was shot primarily in the anamorphic format, with flashback scenes shot in Super 35.[30] Filming began on September 23, 2006.[31] The Marcy Avenue Armory in Williamsburg was used for the interior of Neville's home,[24] while Greenwich Village was used for the exterior.[16] Other locations include the Tribeca section of Lower Manhattan, the aircraft carrier Intrepid, the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx and St. Patrick's Cathedral. [7] Weeds were imported from Florida and were strewn across locations to make the city look like it had overgrown with them.

[19] The closure of major streets was controversial with New Yorkers. Will Smith said, "I don't think anyone's going to be able to do that in New York again any time soon. People were not happy. That's the most middle fingers I've ever gotten in my career." [16] A bridge scene was filmed for six consecutive nights in January on the Brooklyn Bridge to serve as a flashback scene in which New York's citizens evacuate the city. Shooting the scene consumed $5 million of the film's reported $150 million budget, which was the most expensive shot in the city to date.[citation needed] The scene, which had to meet requirements from fourteen government agencies, involved 250 crew members and 1,000 extras, including 160 National Guard members.[32][33] Also present were several Humvees, three Stryker armored vehicles, a 110-foot (34 m) cutter, a 41-foot (12 m) utility boat, and two 25-foot (7.6 m) Response Boat Small craft, as well as other vehicles including taxis, police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances.

[34] Filming concluded on March 31, 2007. [31] Reshoots were conducted around November 2007. Lawrence noted, "We weren't seeing fully rendered shots until about a month ago. The movie starts to take on a whole other life. It's not until later that you can judge a movie as a whole and go, 'Huh, maybe we should shoot this little piece in the middle, or tweak this a little bit.' It just so happened that our re-shoots revolved around the end of the movie." [35]

Effects A week into filming, Francis Lawrence felt the infected (referred to as "Dark Seekers" or "hemocytes" in the script), who were being portrayed by actors wearing prosthetics, were not convincing. His decision to use computer-generated imagery (CGI) resulted in an increased budget and extended post-production, and the end results were poorly received.

The concept behind the infected was that their adrenal glands were open all of the time and Lawrence explained, "They needed to have an abandon in their performance that you just can’t get out of people in the middle of the night when they’re barefoot. And their metabolisms are really spiked, so they’re constantly hyperventilating, which you can’t really get actors to do for a long time or they pass out."[19] The actors remained on set to provide motion capture.[24] "The film's producers and sound people wanted the creatures in the movie to sound somewhat human, but not the standard," so Mike Patton, former lead singer of Faith No More, was engaged to provide the screams and howls of the infected.[39] In addition, CGI was used for the lions and deer in the film, and to erase pedestrians in shots of New York. Workers visible in windows, spectators and moving cars in the distance were all removed. In his vision of an empty New York, Lawrence cited John Ford as his influence: "We didn't want to make an apocalyptic movie where the landscape felt apocalyptic. A lot of the movie takes place on a beautiful day. There's something magical about the empty city as opposed to dark and scary that was the ideal that the cast and crew wanted."[21]

Release I Am Legend was originally slated for a November 21, 2007 release in the United States and Canada,[40] but was delayed to December 14, 2007.[41] The film opened on December 26, 2007 in the United Kingdom,[42] and the Republic of Ireland having been originally scheduled for January 4, 2008.[24] In December 2007, China banned the release of American films in the country, [43] which is believed to have delayed the release of I Am Legend. Will Smith spoke to the chairman of China Film Group about securing a release date, later explaining, "We struggled very, very hard to try to get it to work out, but there are only a certain amount of foreign films that are allowed in."[25]

Marketing A tie-in comic from DC Comics and Vertigo Comics has been created, I Am Legend: Awakening.[44] The project draws upon collaboration from Bill Sienkiewicz, screenwriter Mark Protosevich, and author Orson Scott Card. The son of the original book's author, Richard Christian Matheson, also collaborated on the project. The project will advance from the comic to an online format in which animated featurettes (created by the team from Broken Saints) will be shown on the official website.[45] In October 2007, Warner Bros. Pictures in conjunction with the Electric Sheep Company launched the online multiplayer game I Am Legend: Survival in the virtual world Second Life.

The game is the largest launched in the virtual world in support of a film release, permitting people to play against each other as the infected or the uninfected across a replicated 60 acres (240,000 m2) of New York City. [46] The studio also hired the ad agency Crew Creative to develop a website that would be specifically viewable on the iPhone.[47]

Box office I Am Legend grossed $77,211,321 on its opening weekend in 3,606 theaters, averaging $21,412 per venue, and placing it at the top of the box office. This set a record for highest grossing opening for a film for the month of December .[48] As of May 11, 2008, the film has grossed $256,393,010 in North America and $584,015,483 worldwide. [1] The film was the 6th highest grossing movie of 2007 in North America, and as of July 2008 stands among the top 50 all-time highest grossing films both domestically and worldwide.

Home release The film was released on DVD on March 18, 2008 in two editions: a one-disc release, including the movie with four animated comics ("Death As a Gift", "Isolation", "Sacrificing the Few for the Many", and "Shelter"), and other DVD-ROM features; a two-disc special edition that includes all these extras and an alternative theatrical version of the movie with an alternate ending. On the high-definition end, the movie has been released on the Blu-ray Disc format and HD DVD format along with the DVD release; with the HD-DVD version being released later on April 8, 2008.[49] Both HD releases include all the features available in the two-disc DVD edition. [50] The two-disc version is also available in a steel case, which contains evacuation protocol information on the back side. The DVD version of the film included a digital copy.

The film also got Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD which was released on December 9, 2008.

According to the-numbers.com, the film has sold 5.8 million DVDs and earned $107.9 million in revenue after twelve weeks, making it the fifth best-selling DVD of 2008.[51] However, Warner Bros was reportedly "a little disappointed" with the film's performance on the DVD market. [52]

Critical reception and awards Most critics were favorable towards the film.[53] Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 69 percent of 193 critics gave the film positive write-ups. Similarly, Metacritic determined that the film had received an average score of 65 out of 100 based on 37 reviews.

[53] While much of the negative criticism has concerned the film's third act,[36][37][38] some critics favored the alternative ending in the DVD release.[54] A. O. Scott wrote that Will Smith gave a "graceful and effortless performance" and also noted the "third-act collapse". He felt that the movie "does ponder some pretty deep questions about the collapse and persistence of human civilization". [55] The consensus among favorable reviews was that Will Smith's performance overcame questionable special effects. [56] Dana Stevens of Slate wrote that the movie lost its way around the hour mark, noting that "the Infected just aren't that scary." [29] NPR critic Bob Mondello noted the film's subtext concerning global terrorism and that this aspect made the film fit in perfectly with other, more direct cinematic explorations of the subject.[57] Richard Roeper gave the film a positive review on the television program At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper, commending Will Smith as being in "prime form", also saying there are "some amazing sequences" and that there was "a pretty heavy screenplay for an action film."[58] On the negative side, the film has been criticized for diverging from Matheson's novel, especially in its portrayal of a specifically Christian theme.[59] Popular Mechanics published an article on December 14, 2007 [60] addressing some of the scientific issues raised by the film:

1. the rate of deterioration of urban structures, infrastructure, and survival of fauna and flora 2. the plausibility of a retrovirus spreading out of control as depicted in the film. (The measles virus depicted in the film, however, is not a retrovirus, but is in fact a part of the Paramyxovirus family.)

3. the mechanics of the Brooklyn Bridge's destruction The magazine solicited reactions from author Alan Weisman, virologist W. Ian Lipkin, M.D., and Michel Bruneau, Ph.D., comparing their predictions with the film's depictions. The article raised the most questions regarding the virus' mutation and the medical results, and pointed out that a suspension bridge like the Brooklyn Bridge would likely completely collapse rather than losing only its middle span. Neville's method of producing power using gasoline-powered generators seemed the most credible: "This part of the tale is possible, if not entirely likely," Popular Mechanics editor Roy Berendsohn says.

I Am Legend earned four nominations for the Visual Effects Society Awards,[61] and was also nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards,[62] Outstanding Film and Actor at the Image Awards,[63] and Best Sound at the Satellite Awards. In June 2008, Will Smith won a Saturn Award for Best Actor.[64] Will Smith also won the MTV Award for Best Male Performance.

Prequel Francis Lawrence confirmed that there will be a prequel and that Will Smith will be reprising his role. He stated that this movie would reveal what happens to Neville before the infected take over New York. D. B. Weiss has been recruited to write the script, while Lawrence would direct "if we figure out the story." Smith stated the film would have Neville and his team going from New York City to Washington, D.C. and back again, as they made their last stand. [65] The film will again explore the premise of what it's like to be alone, as Lawrence explained, ". . . the tough thing is, how do we do that again and in a different way?" [66] It is expected for a 2011 release.[67][68]

Bibliography •

I Am Legend, Richard Matheson, Tor Books; Reissue edition (October 30, 2007), ISBN 0765318741

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