Will Smith, Michael B. Jordan's I Am Legend 2 Plot Details Revealed — with Inspiration from The Last of Us

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The screenwriter behind Will Smith and Michael B. Jordan's upcoming sequel to 2007's I Am Legend is taking some cues from the popular HBO series The Last of Us.

On Wednesday, Akiva Goldsman told Deadline that the sequel "will start a few decades later than the first," though he did not clarify Jordan's role in the story.

"I'm obsessed with The Last of Us, where we see the world just post-apocalypse but also after a 20-, 30-year lapse," Goldsman said. "You see how the earth reclaims the world, and there's something beautiful in the question of, as man steps away from being the primary tenant, what happens? That will be especially visual in New York."

The filmmaker added that "the possibilities are endless" for the I Am Legend sequel as he spoke about working with the 1954 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson.

"We trace back to the original Matheson book, and the alternate ending as opposed to the released ending in the original film," Goldsman told the outlet. "What Matheson was talking about was that man's time on the planet as the dominant species had come to an end. That's a really interesting thing we're going to get to explore."

"There will be a little more fidelity to the original text," he added.

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I Am Legend's story is about a disease that spread among humans turning them into zombie-like beings that hide from sunlight. Scientist Neville (Smith) was a lone survivor living in New York City, struggling to develop a cure.

The sequel was first announced last March, and efforts to produce a follow-up to the 2007 movie with Goldsman date back to 2012, according to Deadline.

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Last March, Smith, 54, told Entertainment Tonight he never planned to make an I Am Legend sequel until he heard the idea for the new movie.

"It was one of those ones I was gonna leave alone, and then I heard the idea," he said at the time, adding that he thought to himself: "That might work. I think we can do that," after hearing a pitch for the film.

"I can't talk about it yet, but it's a really, really cool concept and [Jordan] was a part of creating the idea," Smith added.