Times talks Legend

One of the movies coming out in 2007 that I’m increasingly worried about is I AM LEGEND. The adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic novel into a big-budget Will Smith action flick has me a little bit jumpy. For one, there have been significant changes to a script that was, at one time, pretty well written. Those changes were made to appease Smith who made similar changes to I, ROBOT to make that more of a “Will Smith movie.” I want to like LEGEND just on principle alone – vampire creatures, post-apocalyptic New York, director Francis Lawrence – but I worry about whether this will be more a “Will Smith movie” than a Richard Matheson movie. The New York Times recently visited the set and published an article on the update in yesterday’s paper (complete with funky new pic below). It’s not exactly controversial – Smith doesn’t make himself available and (likely as some provision of access to the talent) there is just some basic backstory. But it might serve to offer up some tidbits like this quote from Lawrence: “There is a little bit of an AIDS metaphor here…because the people Neville deals with are infected…They’re not dead, they’re not vampires, they have a chronic disease.” You can read the whole article for yourself then return here to debate the merits of the film below.