Will Smith in I Am Legend Courtesy of Warner Bros.

How do you describe this film to someone who has no idea what it is about? Because it is both sci-fi and horror.
Yeah. Well, the studio's not going like this description, but it is a character drama. It is a huge summer-blockbuster character drama. And there are science-fiction elements. We are genre-conscious — there are zombies in this movie — but this is absolutely straight down the middle a character study.

What do you think of the vampires in this film? Have you seen them?
Yeah. They're totally digital, so it's one of those things where you never — you don't really get a good look. There are concept drawings and ideas but you're actually working with nothing. So the concept drawings looked great, but I haven't seen [them in] motion.

Is there a lot of action in this movie?
We have the standard three action sequences, but we're concentrating aggressively on not having action sequences for the sake of action sequences. We're holding ourselves firmly to the idea that it has got to be driven by character. So we have stunning action sequences, but I feel like you'll connect to them emotionally, but you're not going to feel like you're being bombarded with an action sequence. That's our hope.

When was the last time you watched Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, which was also based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend?
Oh, God, we've been watching it every day. In the production office, we run all of the movies 24 hours a day so that we have a connection [to them]. I think that was [screenwriter] Akiva [Goldsman]'s idea. There are 16 monitors on throughout the production office. So Omega Man and 28 Days and Cast Away, all of those movies that are connected, that have similar themes [play constantly]. There are things that people do well that you want to avoid, and there's things that people do poorly that you want to avoid.

What's it like working with director Francis Lawrence?
He did the Men in Black II video, so we have worked together before. He's just extremely easy-going. He's smart and a huge researcher. And I love that. I'm so big on research. And we went to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. We went to San Francisco and met with a couple of the foremost virologists and epidemiologists in the world. I just love programming all of that stuff. I just feel like it gives it a texture of authenticity.

Did you work together with the screenwriter and director to develop the duality inherent in the script?
Akiva doesn't need much help from anybody else to find that type of stuff. It's very collaborative, and we build on ideas that are there. One of the early things that you see in the script is there are signs everywhere that says God still loves us.