Francis Lawrence opens up on why he and Will Smith rushed to reshoot the concluding sequence

You can’t accuse Francis Lawrence of not owning his mistakes — or at least what he views as his mistakes. The Hunger Games director recently admitted that he regretted splitting the trilogy’s final book into two films, and now he’s opening up about how he let fear drive the decision to reshoot the ending of I Am Legend.

Before Lawrence worked closely with author Suzanne Collins to adapt three Hunger Games novels, including the recent prequel release, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, the filmmaker helmed 2007’s I Am Legend, based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 book of the same name. Written by Akiva Goldsman, I Am Legend starred Will Smith as Dr. Robert Neville, an Army scientist who appears to be the last human alive in New York City after a deadly virus wiped out mankind, leaving behind vampire-like mutants called the Darkseekers.

Will Smith and Francis LawrenceTOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP via Getty Images

With Smith still at the peak of his A-list powers, I Am Legend became a smash hit, earning almost $600 million. But Lawrence believes there was room for improvement, pointing to the much-discussed climactic scene.

“It was my second movie, probably a $150-million movie, it’s with a big studio, it’s Will Smith, and so there’s expectations on the kind of movie that you’re going to deliver, and I think we felt the pressure,” Lawrence tells The Messenger. “Akiva, Will and I always felt like we were sort of smuggling this weird, little character study about a guy who’s alone in New York and who’s got survivor’s guilt and social deprivation, and that’s what we loved, but we knew we couldn’t do a little character piece for Warner Bros. And this is where we made the mistake: we were afraid of having the novella’s true original nihilistic ending. And we blew it because I realized everybody went to see The Last Man on Earth and they would’ve totally bought in with the original nihilistic ending, which would’ve hit more thematically. It just would’ve been a better movie.”

Will Smith in ‘I Am Legend’Warner Bros.

More in line with the book, the initial ending that Lawrence filmed featured the Darkseekers breaking into Neville’s home and trying to get into his lab, where he’d been conducting tests on a female Darkseeker. But Neville soon realizes that the Darkseeker leader just wants his partner back, and so Neville apologizes and hands her over. The Darkseekers leave, with Neville now convinced that he’s become the true monster. He abandons his research and heads to Vermont with his two new friends, Anna (Alice Braga) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan), in search of a survivor’s colony.

And yet, what actually served as the conclusion of the film’s theatrical version was much deadlier. As the Darkseekers attempt to make their way in, Neville discovers that he has cured the female subject. He gives a sample of the blood to Anna and sends her and Ethan off via a chute in the lab. Neville then sacrifices himself by setting off a grenade to kill the oncoming Darkseekers. I Am Legend ends with Anna and Ethan making it to the survivor’s colony and Anna’s narration revealing that Neville ultimately became a legend thanks to his efforts.

“We shot that because the original ending tested really, really, really badly, and, of course, we later released the alt-ending and then that gets better reviews,” Lawrence shares, referencing the cut sequence’s inclusion on the DVD. “We shot the theatrical ending over three days, probably three weeks before the movie came out. It was last-minute, because we were like, ‘Oh man, this ending is not testing well, we’ve got to come up with something and put it together fast.”

He continues, “There’s actually an amazing video because when we were coming up with this new ending, I pitched it generally, and then Will and I basically riffed out what it was, and, in the office where we were doing our editing, we shot on my iPhone. I shot the whole ending in an office, so it was like Will and the guy banging on the glass and pulling the grenade. So somewhere there’s a video I have shot on my iPhone of Will acting out that ending in a Warner Bros. office.”

Almost two decades later, Lawrence is getting a bit of vindication as a sequel with Smith and Michael B. Jordan is in development. Wait, what about Neville dying? Lawrence’s original ending is being viewed as canon, paving the way for Smith’s return. A legendary twist indeed.