Akiva Goldsman, out stumping for his feature directing debut Winter’s Tale, chatted with iO9 about the I Am Legend sequel that never came to be. The writer and producer spoke rather openly about the project, which Hollywood seemed desperate to get Will Smith back for- despite his character’s fate in the original film. But it seems that this one went the way of Independence Day 2, with Smith refusing to take part in any planned follow-ups. Without Smith, there could be no I Am Legend 2, so Goldsman talked a bit about what might have been:

“I mean, we wrote a prequel [and] a sequel. We had a really interesting prequel, which was the first outbreak of the virus, during a Thanksgiving Day parade, which was awesome. We did a really interesting prequel that [took place] later. Which was right after the first… really right when the population of of humans became pretty decimated. And it was this sort of trek to Washington. Which included a dark seeker elephant that had broken out of the zoo.

Then we did a sequel, that started with Neville again — and you realized that he was cloned. We’ve tried every which way. In fact if you’re available you could be in the next movie. It will never happen but we really enjoyed trying to make it happen.”

Clones, killer elephants, and a Thanksgiving Day Parade massacre. Interesting.

After seeing I Am Legend, did you have a hankering for more of that world? Would you have followed a continued franchise? Personally, I enjoyed the film, but it felt like a one-and-done deal. Anything after that would’ve felt like it was milking it. How about you?

SOURCE: iO9