Will Smith in I Am Legend Courtesy of Warner Bros.

AT PLAY

Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, home to exclusive department stores such as Tiffany & Co., Cartier, and Bergdorf Goodman normally bustles with shoppers, tourists, and businessmen. But the world's most expensive street has been turned into a graveyard, deserted, devoid of all human life. An eerie silence reigns. The lone figure of Will Smith treads wearily down the asphalt, a watchful German shepherd at his heels. But the last man on earth, as the poster for I Am Legend reminds us, is not alone.

"That was chilling," Smith says. "We cleared probably six blocks up Fifth Avenue. And there're all the iconic shops and everything. And even if you've never been to New York, you know Fifth Avenue."

To add to the sense of decimation, the avenue is dressed to show nature beginning to overtake the concrete and steel. The tar has ruptured due to lack of maintenance, and grass has pushed through the cracks. The crew, recalls Smith, "would run in and put things down really quick and then take them out when the cars had to go by. But to walk down Fifth Avenue and [see] burnt-out cars and water lilies in the street and things like that was a scary concept."

In keeping with the basic premise of the novel of the same name by Richard Matheson, Smith plays Robert Neville, apparently the last survivor of a global apocalypse caused by a pandemic that has all but wiped out humanity. Of those who have survived, a small percentage turned into living incubators for the virus, while only a tiny fraction are not affected. Neville is immune but he spends his time trying to develop a cure — and avoid being ravaged by the rabid mutants after his blood.

There are, however, some departures that die-hard fans of the novel and the story's two previous film incarnations (1964's The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price and 1971's The Omega Man with Charlton Heston) will find striking.

Will Smith in I Am Legend Courtesy of Warner Bros.

"It… is fundamentally different from the book in that it is contemporary," says screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (I, Robot; A Beautiful Mind; The Da Vinci Code). "When Richard Matheson wrote the novel, a viral epidemic [that could turn] people into vampires was actually science fiction. Today it would be considered fantasy. So we have updated the technologies to some degree." And while the film remains true to the spirit of the book, the ending of the novel has been altered, says Goldsman, "in that it is not sci-fi comedy. There is a tendency of late to replace dramatic scenes in a science fiction context with schtick. The straight sci-fi movie has all but vanished."

Goldsman concedes that the film is a weird hybrid, essentially a character piece embedded in a holiday blockbuster budget: "If you look at the two predecessors, they are a fascinating exploration of what you can do with this material." He describes The Omega Man as wonderfully camp and the Vincent Price film as very interior.

"You want to tell both a human story and you want to some extent have a monster movie. And that is a funny line to walk because you are bouncing back and forth between an Armageddon movie and Cast Away," Goldsman says.