Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros./Alamy
Topics: Film and TV, Will Smith,
Hannah Smith
An I Am Legend sequel is officially in the works, with Will Smith set to star and produce alongside Michael B. Jordan.
Smith teased the shock announcement with a post on Instagram, in which he shared a captionless image of a deserted New York street.
The as-yet untitled sequel is currently thin on the ground in terms of plot details, with a director yet to be confirmed. However Deadline reports that the film is set to see the return of the screenwriter for the 2007 original, Akiva Goldsman.
The film will see Smith and the Black Panther star - two of Hollywood's biggest box office icons - united on screen for the first time.
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I Am Legend remains one of Smith's most iconic films to date, starring the Oscar-nominated actor as a army virologist Robert Neville, who finds himself in a deserted post-apocalyptic New York City as he works to develop a cure to a virus that wiped out most of mankind.
The film took $256.4 million at the US box office, and raked in $585.4 million worldwide, further cementing Smith's position as one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.
Since then a sequel has been floated a number of times, with the Hollywood Reporter writing that plans for a follow-up movie have been discussed since as far back as 2012.
Smith has previously spoken about I Am Legend as one of the highlights in his storied career, saying in 2015: 'I’m obsessed with trying to put small character dramas into the middle of blockbuster packages... The most successful I’ve ever been with that concept is I Am Legend.'
News of the sequel has been met with excitement by fans, but also a fair bit of confusion. If you've seen the movie you'll probably understand why: Smith's character was famously killed off at the end of the original I Am Legend, so there are understandable questions as to how they're planning on bringing him back for a sequel.
One plausible answer to that comes in the form of an alternative ending released as part of a 2008 directors cut, in which Smith's character survives to the end of the movie.
It's possible that the film will follow on from the events of that director's cut, rather than the original release, but with no date for the sequel's release, it looks like we're just going to have to wait and see.
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