I Am Legend

i am legend
Originally uploaded by macslost.

Richard Matheson writes some cool-ass horror & sci-fi stuff. He's had several stories made into movies already, like Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shinking Man, Legend of Hell House, etc. He also wrote the Twilight Zone Movie and the awesome Amazing Stories episode, The Doll, which won John Lithgow an Emmy.

ANYWAY, My favorite story of his is I Am Legend, where a lone man is the survivor in a plague-like apocalypse that turned the people of the world into vampiric creatures. He's alone in the world and everyday he wakes up, fixes the barriers on his house, hunts around the city for sleeping vampires, stocks supplies, returns home, locks up before dark, turns the music up really loud so he can't hear them screaming and clawing to get inside and gets drunk. Everyday. Until of course the day where something changes.

It's been made into a film twice before, once with Vincent Price (The Last Man on Earth) and again with Charlton Heston (The Omega Man), which wasn't nearly as faithful to the book as the Price version. And now, once more with feeling! WB has greenlit a version that would take place in a post-apocalyptic New York, starring Will Smith and directed by the dude that did Constantine.

Rock on.