Will Smith Once Felt People Would Be ‘Rejecting Me’ if ‘I Am Legend’ Failed
Will Smith has made many box-office hits during his long career. But there was one hit movie whose failure would’ve been personally devastating for the mega-star.
Will Smith felt ‘I Am Legend’ hinged on his performance
I Am Legend was a project that had been circling around Smith for a long time. He was initially supposed to do the project with Michael Bay. But plans fell through, and he’d eventually develop the movie with filmmaker Francis Lawrence. Smith felt that I Am Legend was a unique take on a genre of film he was already familiar with. It wasn’t the traditional save-the-world blockbuster that helped Smith make a name for himself. Instead, the story would focus on a scientist who was seemingly the last and only human being on an apocalyptic Earth.
The Oscar winner found himself more focused on the psychology of his character more than the movie’s special effects.
“What we were trying to do was to completely remove genre; so let’s look at the psychological deterioration of the character and let’s make the small art film version of this movie and then put all of the other elements – the blockbuster packaging – around it. We were just very specific to never say that to anybody at Warner Bros,” Smith once told BBC.
But this made the feature perhaps more personal to Smith than any other film he’d done prior. He felt the horror movie would live or die based on his performance alone.
“There was definitely pressure this time,” he said. “I think that the combination of the amount of work we put into this film and the way that we decided to do it – we essentially employed a different spirit behind making this film that you usually don’t have in film-making. We all took artistic leaps when making this film. But then there was the added element of it just being me on camera for the first hour of the film. I took it that if this film was rejected, people were actually rejecting me more than not liking a film. So it was a huge relief for me on Sunday night when we got the numbers.”
What to expect from ‘I Am Legend 2’
Not much is known about the sequel to Smith’s I Am Legend. The movie, titled I Am Legend 2, was announced to be in development back in 2022. Not too long afterwards, it was reported that Michael B. Jordan will star alongside Smith on the project. Smith confided not too long ago that the movie will be following an alternate ending rather than the conclusion seen during its theatrical release.
“You have to be a real I Am Legend buff to know this, but in the first, theatrical version, my character dies, but on the DVD there was an alternate version of the ending where my character lived. We are going with the mythology of the DVD version. I can’t tell you anything more, but Michael B. Jordan is in,” Smith said at a film festival according to Variety.
Much more recently, the Creed star also gave an update in regards to the film’s development.
“We’re still working on the script and getting that up to par,” Jordan said to People. “It doesn’t have a release date or anything like that. I’m not sure exactly where we’re going to be filming that one, but I’m really excited to get in front of the camera with him. Being somebody that I’ve looked up to for a really long time, to be able to work with Will is something I’m really looking forward to. I’m really excited.”
