Neville carries a high-powered rifle, and tries to get off a shot at a deer, but returns empty-handed to his Washington Square apartment, which appears well stocked with food and other goods.Īlthough he holds back from embracing the genuinely surreal, director Francis Lawrence (“Constantine”) displays a strong sensitivity to the majesty of desolation (he was reportedly inspired by John Ford’s Western landscapes). Billboards for “Hairspray,” “Rent” and “Wicked” still adorn Times Square, but the only living beings in evidence are some flying birds, a herd of stampeding deer and a family of lions stealthily hunting its dinner.Īnd then there is one man, Robert Neville (Smith), first seen racing a red-and-white Shelby Mustang GT 500 through the canyons of midtown in the company of his German shepherd. The setting is a desolate Manhattan, parts of it unchanged but others in ruins, upholstered in part by grass and weeds and with abandoned vehicles jammed together. Akiva Goldsman subsequently came aboard to help produce and give the script a final go.įollowing a brief prologue (featuring a TV clip of an uncredited Emma Thompson as a doctor announcing a cure for cancer), the opening minutes are breathtaking in their haunting imagery.

That pic was to have toplined Arnold Schwarzenegger with Ridley Scott directing at various points in the interim, Tom Cruise and Michael Douglas have been attached as stars, as was Michael Bay as director. The scripters of “The Omega Man” get credit on this new version (curiously given the many differences between the two films), initially penned by Mark Protosevich when Warner Bros.

First adaptation, the 1964 Vincent Price starrer “The Last Man on Earth,” lensed in Italy by helmer Sidney Salkow, was a cheesy affair, while the 1971 “The Omega Man,” toplining Charlton Heston under Boris Sagal’s direction, murkily altered the story to put the leading man up against an albino cult called “the Family.” A direct-to-vid item called “I Am Omega” (from the Asylum, specialists in parasitic low-budget versions of big-budget studio fare) has just been produced.

Matheson’s pioneering novel, which worked a lot of science into a story populated by vampiric predators, hasn’t fared too well on the bigscreen thus far.

I am legend 1954