In the years since 2007’s post-apocalyptic thriller I Am Legend, Warner Bros. has been trying to find a way to fashion a franchise from the film. They have, over the years, considered a potential prequel and then a seemingly impossible sequel. Now, though, it appears the studio is ready to abandon finding a way for Will Smith to return and has come up with a plan to craft a reboot.
According to Deadline, Warners has retrieved Gary Graham’s spec script **A Garden At The End Of The World **from storage, where it has been sitting since the company bought it in April. Graham, an Apple store worker-turned-scriptwriter, concocted what was at the time described as a science fiction take on The Searchers, but that apparently contains enough similarities to Richard Matheson’s original Legend story that the studio has now engaged him to re-work it. It will become a new take on the tale of scientist Robert Neville and his fight to survive in a world where a virus has killed most of humanity and turned a small number of survivors into, essentially, vampires.
The advantage of rebooting the concept means that A) there’s no need to consider Smith’s participation and B) sequels can flow happily provided that no-one decides to follow the route of the 2007 film and – SPOILER ALERT – kill off Neville. Although of course if he lives, you move ever further away from Matheson's original.
Given the chequered history of attempts to keep the **Legend **machine rolling, we’ll wait and see if this latest effort pans out. Feel free to direct your cynicism about reboots to the usual comments below.