When news came out last year that Will Smith and Michael B. Jordan were working on a sequel to Smith’s 2007 movie I Am Legend, pedantic movie nerds (like us, okay?) pointed out that Will Smith’s character died in the original movie—one of the main things that generally prevents a character from appearing in a sequel. However, as we pedantically noted at the time, the I Am Legend DVD contained an alternate ending that was a little more faithful to Richard Matheson’s original book, where Smith’s character lived and had to endure the realization that he had become a monster in the eyes of the vampire-zombies that had taken over Manhattan.
As it turns out, we didn’t need to worry about it being so complex: Speaking at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia this weekend (via Variety), Smith confirmed that I Am Legend 2 is doing the sensible thing and just using the ending that makes more sense. He says you have be a “real I Am Legend buff” to know about the alternate ending (that’s all of us now, because you read the first paragraph!), but he says “we are going with the mythology of the DVD version.” He also says they just got a script in and that Michael B. Jordan is in it, but he declined to say anything else.
And, really, if you ask the average person who saw I Am Legend in 2007, would they even remember the original ending? Or would they just accept it if you told them that he lived? Hollywood already constantly does that thing where you make a legacy sequel that ignores all of the other sequels, so what difference does it make if you just decide that a movie ended differently in order to justify the existence of a follow-up?