I Am Legend Francis Lawrence

Development

The science-fiction horror genre reemerged in the late 1990s.[16] In 1995, Warner Bros. began developing the film project, having owned the rights to Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend since 1970[17] and having already made the 1971 adaptation The Omega Man. Mark Protosevich was hired to write the script after the studio was impressed with his spec script of The Cell. Protosevich's first draft took place in 2000 in San Francisco, and contained many similarities with the finished film, though the Darkseekers (called 'Hemocytes') were civilized to the point of the creatures in The Omega Man and Anna was a lone morphine addict, as well as the fact that a Hemocyte character named Christopher joined forces with Neville. Warner Bros. immediately put the film on the fast track, attaching Neal H. Moritz as producer.[16]

Actors Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas,[18] and Mel Gibson[16] had been considered to star in the film,[18] using a script by Protosevich and with Ridley Scott as director; however, by June 1997, the studio's preference was for actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In July, Scott and Schwarzenegger finalized negotiations,[19][20] with production slated to begin the coming September,[18] using Houston as a stand-in for the film's setting of Los Angeles.[21] 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 mix of sci-fi and psychological thriller, without dialogue in the first hour and with a sombre ending.[16] The creatures in Logan's version were similar to the Darkseekers of the finished film in their animalistic, barbaric nature. 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 disappointments – 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 Scott again.[16]

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.[22] Scott rewrote the script to reduce the film's budget by $20 million but in March 1998, the studio canceled the project due to budgetary concerns and quite possibly to the box office failures of Scott's last three films, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, White Squall, and G.I. Jane.[23][24][16] Schwarzenegger's recent films (Eraser and Warner Bros. own Batman & Robin) also underperformed, and the studio's latest experiences with big budget sci-fi movies Sphere and The Postman were negative as well.[16] In August 1998, director Rob Bowman was attached to the project,[25] with Protosevich hired to write a third new draft, far more action-oriented than his previous versions but the director (who reportedly wished for Nicolas Cage to play the lead) moved on to direct Reign of Fire and the project did not get off the ground.[16][26]

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.[27] Bay and Smith were attracted to the project based on a redraft that would reduce its budget.[28] The project was shelved due to Warner Bros. president Alan F. Horn's dislike of the script.[29] In 2004, Akiva Goldsman was asked by head of production Jeff Robinov to produce the film.[30] 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 to direct Hellboy II: The Golden Army.[31] 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."[30]

Goldsman took on the project, as he admired the second I Am Legend film adaptation, The Omega Man.[32] A rewrite was done to distance the project from the other zombie films inspired by the novel,[27] as well as from the recently released 28 Days Later, although Goldsman was inspired by the scenes of a deserted London in the British horror film to create the scenes of a deserted New York City.[32] A 40-page scene-by-scene outline of the film was developed by May 2006. When delays occurred on Smith's film Hancock, which was scheduled for 2007, it was proposed to switch the actor's films. This meant filming would have to begin in 16 weeks; production was given a green light, using Goldsman's script and the outline.[30] Elements from Protosevich's script were introduced, while the crew consulted with experts on infectious diseases and solitary confinement.[32] Rewrites continued throughout filming, because of Smith's improvisational skills and Lawrence's preference to keep various scenes silent.[30] 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.[33]

Casting

Will Smith signed on to play Robert Neville in April 2006.[34] 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."[32] 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.[35] 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.[36] 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?"[27] He also cited an influence in Tom Hanks' performance in Cast Away (2000).[32]

Abbey and Kona, both three-year-old German Shepherd dogs, played Neville's dog Sam.[37] The rest of the supporting cast consists of Salli Richardson as Zoe, Robert's wife,[38] and Alice Braga as a survivor named Anna.[38] Willow Smith, Will Smith's daughter, makes her film debut as Marley, Neville's daughter.[39] Emma Thompson has an uncredited role as Dr. Alice Krippin, who appears on television explaining her cure for cancer that mutates into the virus.[40] Singer Mike Patton provided the guttural screams of the infected "hemocytes", and Dash Mihok provided the character animation for the infected "alpha male". Several filler characters with uncredited roles were in old news broadcasts and flashbacks, such as the unnamed President's voice (Pat Fraley), and the cast of The Today Show.

Filming

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.[17] 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."[35] Warner Bros. initially rejected this idea because of the logistics,[30] 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.[33] Michael Tadross convinced authorities to close busy areas such as the Grand Central Terminal viaduct, several blocks of Fifth Avenue, and Washington Square Park.[30] The film was shot primarily in the anamorphic format, with flashback scenes shot in Super 35.[41]

Filming began on September 23, 2006.[42] The Marcy Avenue Armory in Williamsburg was used for the interior of Neville's home,[35] while Greenwich Village was used for the exterior.[27] Other locations include the Tribeca section of lower Manhattan, the aircraft carrier Intrepid, the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, and St. Patrick's Cathedral.[17] Weeds were imported from Florida and were strewn across locations to make the city look like it had been overgrown with them.[30] 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 anytime soon. People were not happy. That's the most middle fingers I've ever gotten in my career."[27]

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 likely the most expensive shoot in the city to date. The scene, which had to meet requirements from 14 government agencies, involved 250 crew members and 1,000 extras, including 160 National Guard members.[6][7][43] Also present were several Humvees, three Strykers, 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.[6] Filming concluded on March 31, 2007.[42] Computer-generated imagery (CGI) was used to depict the main spans of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge collapsing as missiles from passing military jets blew them up to quarantine Manhattan island.

The end of the film was shot in Lambertville, New Jersey.[44]

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."[45]

Effects

A week into filming, Lawrence felt the infected (referred to as "Darkseekers" or "hemocytes" in the script), who were being portrayed by actors wearing prosthetics, were not convincing. His decision to use CGI resulted in an increased budget and extended post-production, although the end results were not always well received.[46][47] 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."

— Francis Lawrence[30]

The actors remained on set to provide motion capture.[35][48] "The film's producers and sound people wanted the creatures in the movie to sound somewhat human, but not the standard", so Mike Patton, lead singer of Faith No More, was engaged to provide the screams and howls of the infected.[49]

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."

— Francis Lawrence (2007)[32]