Will Smith’s New I Am Legend 2 Tease Is a Major Reveal (And Not What Fans Expected)

There are quite a few fan-favorite films in Will Smith’s catalog, but one of the best is finally getting a sequel with I Am Legend 2. The project has morphed from a prequel into a sequel and has added Michael B. Jordan as a producer and co-star, but aside from that we haven’t received much in the way of the information. Smith recently changed that however during his recent appearance on Revolt’s Drink Champs, where Smith revealed the first details on Jordan’s character, and it shuts down a previously popular theory.

When I Am Legend 2 came up, N.O.R.E. was asking how on earth there could be a part 2 with how part 1 ended. Smith talked about the transition from a prequel to a sequel and then went into a bit of detail on the role Jordan plays in the film (H/T ScreenRant). Also, N.O.R.E. wants to be a wolf in the film so you just never know if it actually happens. “I can explain. There was an alternate ending that came out on the DVD. Watch the alternate ending, my character lives,” Smith said.

“What we were gonna do was the prequel, so we were gonna do the prequel. … And [Akiva Goldsman] was like, but wait, what if we make a new version from the alternate ending where your character is still alive and you know, Michael B. Jordan’s character currently is the head of a new settlement,” Smith said. When the possibility of Jordan playing the son came up, Smith shot that down. “He’s not my son, my darkseeker son (laughs). Smith then gave a bit more detail, saying “It’s a cool concept. Currently, Michael B’s character is the head of a settlement. There’s a settlement in Connecticut.”

Smith also went into more detail on how the alternate ending on the DVD was actually the original ending they shot for the theatrical release. They had already shot the ending and were ready to head to theaters, but after testing the film’s ending received substantial backlash from that audience.

[RELATED: I Am Legend Director Still Feels Conflicted Over Both of Film’s Endings]

“The alternate ending was the first ending, the original ending. It was the original script, and it was based on the original novel. We tested it, and it was the only movie I’ve ever had where the audience booed. At that ending, they booed. The final scene where they are around me in the alternate ending, the darkseekers, what we realize in the alternate ending is that, he realizes the one that I was keeping in the room was his woman, and I realize it was his woman. The meaning of the ending was oh s***, I’m the monster,” Smith said. “They think of me as the monster. And we looked up at the wall and we do the shot up at the wall and you see how many of them I’ve killed, and he looks at them, and he looks at me, and then he goes and gets his woman and leaves.”

“So that was the alternate ending. We tested it. So how they do these things is they put it in front of an audience, they get about 100 people, they fill it out, there’s five boxes and you say either excellent, very good, good, poor, or very poor,” Smith said. “And what they do is they take the top two boxes, and if you score 90% in the top two boxes, excellent or very good, you know you have a good movie. It was the lowest-scoring movie I’ve ever had, so they score the whole movie but it was because of the ending. It scored 51 in the top two boxes, and we were like what?”

“So then they fill out the thing, and it was like across the board it was like the ending is bulls***. That’s bulls***, he’s not the monster, they’re darkseekers, they’ve been chasing him. There was just something that was just horrific, no he’s not the monster, we didn’t watch this whole movie to figure out you’re the monster. No they’re the monsters. So they felt cheated,” Smith said.

“So six weeks before the movie comes out we had to reshoot the ending that was actually in the movie where my character dies. Where my character dies in the end is actually the alternate ending. We were faithful to the novel in the previous one, so when we did the new ending, it scored 91 in the top two boxes, and it’s just one of those weird things that happens,” Smith said. “It was like a major save, we saved it because the audience hated it. but it was what we originally wanted to do, so we were like, it was probably an $8 million dollar ending that was scrapped, right? Because there were special effects and all of that stuff in it, so we ultimately, we were like well we’ve got to use it somewhere, so we put it on the DVD and Blu-ray.”

Are you excited for I Am Legend 2, and which ending do you prefer in the original film? Let us know in the comments, and you can talk all things I Am Legend and movies with me on Bluesky @knightofoa!