Cool News
I AM LEGEND's Writer & Director Consider THE WORLD WITHOUT US...
Merrick here...
Mark Protosevich and Francis Lawrence (respectively the writer and director of I AM LEGEND) are looking at the end of the world from a different perspective via their adaptation of Alan Weisman's book THE WORLD WITHOUT US (HERE
).
The book, a best-seller and a critical favorite, took on the idea of life on Earth if humans were suddenly to disappear. The book explored how edifices and houses would deteriorate, how long and which man-made objects would linger and last, the environmental impact nuclear waste and other pollutants would have left unchecked and how nature would spread over built environments.
Fox is not aiming to make a documentary but rather a fictional feature buttressed by the book's science. It would, for example, show an event that would lead to man's disappearance.
...says THIS REPORT in Hollywood Reporter.
Similar subject matter was recently addressed somewhat chillingly in The History Channel's LIFE AFTER PEOPLE special. It's...haunting.
The show asks the question: what would happen if every person on Earth simply disappeared all at once? It follows (and vividly illustrates via effects, etc.) subsequent events in great detail - from the surprisingly fast shut down of unmaintained power grids, the adaptation and/or sad fate of our housepets, the rapid encroachment of wildlife and unchecked greenery, addresses the how & why of building decay/collapse, and explains what little might be left to show future visitors that we were once here...once alive...and sometimes great.
LIFE AFTER PEOPLE spanned hundreds (maybe thousands- I can't remember) of years. If you haven't seen it & this sounds compelling to you, you can find it HERE
. OR, below, there's some nifty embeds of the same material for your consideration...
I'm not sure how this kind of material can be adapted into a dramatic, non-documentary format. But, having a sense of how it all works from the History Channel piece, I can imagine a feature film being quite a gut punch if they find the right angle...
Fox is not aiming to make a documentary but rather a fictional feature buttressed by the book's science. It would, for example, show an event that would lead to man's disappearance.
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...but I'm w/ you Merrick, I'm very curious as to how they can make this a worth-the-while drama.
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...or maybe (gulp) Last?!!?
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Apr 02, 2009 11:24:27 AM CDT
I feel like this is a cool idea, but they'll ruin it with Will S
by dr sauch
They should have aliens happen upon earth, and see what's left, and then discover libraries, broadcast recordings, etc, and tell the story of man through flashbacks. This could be pretty epic if done right. The aliens don't have to be super-weird, they could be humanoid and relatable. It's not out of the question that other carbon-based life would evolve similarly on a similar planet.
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And rats will dance on our graves!
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More talking furballs to tell us how they took over the planet after the people disappeared. Opening weekend: 45 Million.
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I loved the special on History Channel (even if some of the concepts were kinda farfetched...I doubt gliding cats would evolve so quickly when the special indicates most of the skyscrappers would collapse within a period of 500 years). But as a feature film, they would need some type of angle. Maybe some type of "immortal being" or an incredibly durable android or maybe successive generations of some type of animal that survives our downfall or some "regular guy" who is subject to some type of time leap effect - like that episode of DS9 where Sisko got into that reactor core accident and was lost in time and would reappear for short periods. The trick would be to show the gradual (and rapid) decay of our civilization after all the people vanished. In order to properly show that, you would need some fixed point of reference that could watch all this happen. It would be a hard sell as a feature film to just show crumbling cities /w no characters, human or otherwise, as it jumps ahead in the years. It would be ballsy, however.
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Apr 02, 2009 11:30:04 AM CDT
Give me back that fillet o' fish! Give me that fish!
by balzacs_ballsac
I can't stop singing that stoopid McD's commercial.
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So there's a movie about the fall of man and Roland Emmerich isn't directing this for once?
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So w/ no vampires or SUVs, how will they manage to go totally overboard w/ the CGI. Oh yeah, there will be sure to be some deer.
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You've never heard of Bob Marley? Awww hayyyilll nawwww!
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And as with every "Last Person on Earth" movie, there are actually thousands of other people out there. I fucking hate that.
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Apr 02, 2009 11:36:23 AM CDT
As long as no dogs are hurt, I'm just fine with this premise.
by cotton mcknight
I liked I am Legend, but I only saw it once because of the scene with the dog. And I fast forwarded through that. Easily the most painful/heartbreaking thing I've seen in a movie.
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Apr 02, 2009 11:40:46 AM CDT
I'D BE HAPPY IF MARK PROTOSEVICH AND FRANCIS LAWRENCE DISAPPERED
by thefuckingcreepythinman
Lawrence is music video/commercial Directing scum who makes glossy looking shit. Protosevich is a shitty writer who latched onto I Am Legend after the success of Blade and knew that it would get made one day which it did as that Will Smith shit-a-thon which is a shame because the original book is an all time class which has been already made twice as The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price which is by far the best adaptation of that novel.
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I watched the History Channel special. It was interesting for the first hour, but then it started to drag. I certainly don't want to pay to watch what basically sounds like the same thing.
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This is a fucking stupid idea for a movie. I read the book, and it was great. The science was great. The history was great. Nothing about it screamed movie. You either fuck it by making a horrible thriller about what it is that makes people disappear, or you fuck it up by having it be "The world without us except this one guy, oh and these other guys, too." Son of a bitch.
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I fucking loved the beginning where he's just wandering around nyc hunting and shit. I wish they'd have just done this to begin with
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Considering it's been adapted 4 times into a movie and has never come even close to capturing the essence of what made it one of the most incredible books ever written; I don't beleive any hack writer that had to rely on the charisma of Will Smith to sell his vacant screenplay should be credited as writer. RICHARD MATHESON 4 LIFE, SON!!!!!! This idea does sound interesting for a movie, though, but they'll fuck it up somehow by appeasing the suits who consider the American audience to be idiots who need a human in the movie to hold our collective attentions. Well, I guess the American audience has proven that need by buying tickets to the same movies that studios throw out simply to pander us. I admit it, I'm guilty! I bought tickets to the midnight screening of the Friday the 13th remake, so who am I to cirticize?
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Nice use of copyright infringement you fool.
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lawrence is a tool, but unless I'm wrong, I am Legend was written in like 1958, so ragging on Potosevich for making money on his book by turning it into a movie for the THIRD time is unwarrented.
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I don't see how it could really be a compelling movie though.
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Apr 02, 2009 11:55:17 AM CDT
What would be cool is if it's the dead world is intercut
by kikuchiyoboy
with a story of the dying world.
I'd see that. -
Apr 02, 2009 11:55:17 AM CDT
What would be cool is if it's the dead world is intercut
by kikuchiyoboy
with a story of the dying world.
I'd see that. -
You do realize that ANY uploading of a TV show on youtube is a breach of the copyright, yes? That unless it's the channel itself doing it (obviously many media companies now have their own YT channel, so in those cases it's fine), but when it's just fans doing it like this, while they're not trying to make any money off it, it's STILL a copyright violation -- as in ILLEGAL. And apparently this site is okay with that.
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with a story of kikuchiyoboy keeping dumb fucking ideas to himself.
I'd see that. -
The whole point of it is how quickly, and in what way, does the world revert back to its natural state, or does it? As little as one person left alive would have an effect on his small corner of the world and possibly on a larger scale (butterfly effect). Maybe, if buddy is alive but on a space-station orbiting the planet he could observe without influence. But how long will he last, even with enough food and water? 60 years? Long enough to see only the first stages of the decay of cities.
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but not for you...
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Apr 02, 2009 12:08:16 PM CDT
Seems to similar to IAL - maybe they're gonna use it for pt. 2
by juansanchez
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This death cult suicide infatuation so many people have lately is really getting old. It's like a sick fetishist's suicide fantasy, over and over again. OHHHH How *dreamy* it would be if we all were DEAD. Just look around you, it's everywhere. The Earth would be such a nice place if only all the *shudder* PEOPLE would just go away.These people who have this unhealthy fetish with global genocide are sick sick sick.
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A film without characters. Its already been done. Was called Koyanaskatski.
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"The World Without People" is fantasy for those who really want all people gone.
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Send science boy forward in time in 100 or 500 year intervals.
Jeremy Irons shows up at the end of the world drinking tea. -
Apr 02, 2009 12:28:34 PM CDT
Animals suck - what's so cool about giving them the world?
by juansanchez
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Cool idea, but my biggest beef of the book was how much it spent talking about the World *With* Us. He would go on for pages talking about something (say, plastics) and then only spend a paragraph or two saying what the result would be after we were gone. I kinda expected the opposite.
Where there's a movie: the book posits another simian species or two gaining human-like sentience with humanity gone. It's possible that's the angle it will follow. -
and the world will go on. As for all people becoming extinct someday? We will. Someday. As will the sun. And the earth. But life will go on, new suns will arise, and new species will evolve. And as you are part of the whole, not seperate as your puny Ego thinks, you will go on as well. You just wont be blogging on AICN.
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Those were the best 60 seconds of the movie! I would actually see a movie made only of shots of buildings deteriorating and grass growing up on sidewalks!
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Apr 02, 2009 12:41:08 PM CDT
A.I. already showed us exactly what will happen when we're gone:
by flip63hole
waterworld, amphibicopters and aliens. It will be up to little David to tell the mechas what it was like back in the day...
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Cockroaches would freeze to death in the winter in most of the world (it's only home/apartment heating that keeps them alive through the winter months), and rats are overly dependent on human food waste for survival. The rats that didn't starve to death would be consumed by the exploding feral cat and raptor population.
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There's no fucking way a studio would greenlight a Koyaanisqatsi-style art project with no human characters "to whom the audience can relate". Their funding condition will be to add a bad-ass human, or a CGI talking animal. And then yeah, after making it an apocalyptic action movie, they'll add some cheesy camp filled with rag-wearing humans, a la Kevin Coster's The Postman, just because the triumph of the human spirit conquers all.
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I did have Philip Glass's Pruit Igoe in mind when thinking about such a project.
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Watched it in UK where it was narrated by a Brit. Sounded all authoritarian and documentary-like. Just watched a bit on here with the American narrater and it sounds like a sci-fi channel (srry SyFy lol) bad FX movie being narrated by Trailer Guy lol. You should just get Brits to narrate all nature, science, or history programs ;) Exceptions made for Morgan Freeman who can make anything sound classy in a US accent ;)
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Or another last man on earth story. Or...This is just Hollywood masterbation and will never get made.
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sorry guys, but it's true.
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Human returned to earth millenia later after abduction and lightspeed tour of the stars.
Wall-E type robot.
Intelligent animals.
Nobody. No dialogue, just a story that unfolds without characters. Nice change. -
I wonder if this book is selling well, with all the free promotion it got from AICN :))
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Good shit.
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A Canadian co-production, called AFTERMATH a.k.a. POPULATION ZERO. Starts off with people vanishing in mid stride, as if STAR TREK's Q (or an angry Dowd) had snapped his fingers and made us unexist. Then counts forward, first by minutes, then hours, then days, weeks, months, years, centuries, ending millenia in the future. Very nicely done, though I can't quite buy the speed with which the entire electrical grid would die. The problem with this is, any realistic event which would take humans out of the equation with anything resembling this speed - such as nuclear war or an asteroid strike - would see the pictured scenario thrown out the window anyway.
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Mike - Literally typing up my post as you were posting yours.
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have to check it out.
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Apr 02, 2009 1:22:48 PM CDT
funnyhat, PROTOSEVICH ONLY LATCHED ONTO IT BECAUSE OF BLADE...
by thefuckingcreepythinman
It's not like it was his life’s ambition to get I Am Legend made. He just went around peddling it after the success of the first Blade movie. He's an opportunistic hack who’s only credits are that fucking awful Jennifer Lopez turd The Cell and that shitty fucking remake of The Poseidon adventure. Based on those credits I stand by my assertion that Protosevich is a douchebag.
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learn how to write.
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How about using the book's subject matter as inspiration for an original story that takes place in a decayed post human world far into the future? Calling it an adaptation of The World Without Us and having human characters will be a violation of the premise, unless they can use animals or aliens, but even then it takes away a lot of the impact of the premise with those elements too. Some things just don't need a Hollywood adaptation, and this might be one of those things.
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I stopped watching the History Channel show around the evolution of the flying house cats that would swoop down from skyscrapers. They were the dominate predators in a desolate NYC.
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Mostly because they can proofread message board posts before clicking the talkback button.
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...that came up with this one?
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just asking
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Apr 02, 2009 2:03:11 PM CDT
What is the AICN animation supposed to be a spoof of?
by stovetopstuffin'
I'm not getting it.
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Earth ends ... women and minorities hardest hit
The real question is how can Hollywood blame this on America and white people? -
How this would be a film? Very tricky. The big factor on Life after people is if the zoo animals would get out.
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Man, your comment about GONE made me chuckle!
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How this site regurgitates it's own stories and makes them seem new again. Isn't it?
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Apr 02, 2009 2:23:14 PM CDT
If you want a glimpse of what an empty world is like...
by christian_bale_trashed_my_lights
..try going to one of Joaquin Phoenix's "rap" gigs. Once he leaves the stage, look around you and imagine.
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Besides, it doesnt really matter how fast the electric grid shuts down. Hell, we have shut downs every summer and we're actually here to run the damned thing, right?Anyway, it doesnt really matter to me what happens to our stuff when we're gone. In the end, its a problem for the inevitable
Ape Lords to worry about. What those damned dirty apes put their stinking paws on will be their business--not mine. -
Can we get a good director instead?
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People don't want to pay to see this kind of shit, especially in a huge recession.
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Hollywood can't write scripts anymore, so now they're just going to make this sort of non-documentary documentary. Fuck's sake, man, get your act together guys!
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Apr 02, 2009 3:38:59 PM CDT
Someday, the crew of the Battlestar Galactica will visit...
by mrmysteryguest
...and the last season will commence.
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Oh, wait! Pixar already did that last year!
Anyway, yes, it is an intriguing concept. As a matter of fact, it will become a reality in the distant future. When? I don't know. But it's going to happen sooner or later. -
The Last Nigga on Earth should be the title.
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http://www.aintitbalenews.com/
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Hey people come to myspace page and check out my reviews on the latest and best! My url is www.myspace.com/martinjunior84
hope you enjoy, and if you got a myspace account add me! -
ten bucks says they end up calling that film "the last man on earth"
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...for "The World Without Us" http://tinyurl.com/dgub9z
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About how those two are leaving the film industry.
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For once, I'm excited...the neatest thing about I AM LEGEND were the eerie scenes of deterioration it depicted, so this time, it appears they lined up exactly the correct personnel.
But they should consider merging the book's thesis with the plot from the excellent 80s Aussie flick THE QUIET EARTH.
Better yet, reverse the plot and have two women (Angelina Jolie and Megan Fox) fighting over a guy (Jack Black). Instant hit with the geeks. -
Just Use George R Stewart's Earth Abides, its a better story and well known to SciFi fans. That book would translate better to an actual film about the exact same thing since it has at least one person in it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Abides
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Then this project is already fucked.
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Abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster.
I've been there. It's freaky. The town is falling apart and nature is reclaiming it at an astonishing rate. -
They also mention the DMZ betwixt the Koreas
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I fucking LOVE your new site! I was getting all misty eyed over our time on node 39976, then I discover this. Very fucking professional, man.
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fascinates me. V'S, did you take an organized tour of Pripyat, or venture out there on your own, like the chick on the motorcycle?
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As an Australian, I'd like to claim it but we can't.
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It'll either be a documentary type giving us a tour of the world without humans, or be from the POV of a animal like Fluffy the cat or Fido running lose trying to survive after eating the decaying body of its human master. Fuck yeah! A movie without humans.
The ONLY thing to suffer will be any domesticated animals. After that it would be the best thing the planet has experienced prior to us evolving into the parasites we all are.
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Airbender IS the new Fartman movie.
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Some interesting concepts, as usual muddled with the network's standard condescending narration and irritating zip-zap-whiz-bang editing suite tricks. Also, it seems to assume people will just vanish like in Left Behind, when most likely (a la The Road) there will be a gradual deterioration -- rioting, scavenging, etc. Those power plants will be non-functional long before the last humans are gone, as anything valuable (copper wire) will have been looted from them first.
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The introductory part where the superflu gradually kills 99% of the people on earth really got to me. After that it just devolved into the standard King plucky-humans-survive formula (with fewer Maine accents iirc...)
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The introductory part where the superflu gradually kills 99% of the people on earth really got to me. After that it just devolved into the standard King plucky-humans-survive formula (with fewer Maine accents iirc...)
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