Click here to read Premiere's interview with Will Smith.

Virologist Robert Neville (Smith) walks a lonely road as the last person in New York City unaffected by a plague that has killed off or horrifically transformed everyone else. But, hey, there are perks. "It's four years postapocalypse, and I'm hunting a deer in Times Square," says Smith, laying out a scenario in which the city has been reclaimed by nature. Richard Matheson's novel has been adapted twice before, as 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man. But "our guy has more of a motor to him," says director Lawrence (Constantine), who signed on after a lengthy development process that saw Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ridley Scott, and Michael Bay flirt with the project. The story's location is also a new tweak — and a challenging one, given that it's the city that never sleeps. "It just seemed like you had to take the story to New York, because seeing the city empty is so potent," says Lawrence. "We've got 200 production assistants doing lockups, trying to stop traffic and pedestrians. It gets pretty crazy."