Shades of the I AM LEGEND movie that could have been. Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales, who wrote and directed the gritty revenge thriller BIG BAD WOLVES (selected by Quentin Tarantino as the best movie of 2013–not a bad little distinction to earn, there, guys) will be adapting the short story of the same title into a full-length flick. The story itself was written by Kelley Armstrong, creator of the television series BITTEN, which airs on Syfy. Kelley will serve as executive producer of the movie.
The premise, however, more than the pedigree, has me excited. Humanity is hit not by yet another zombie plague, but a plague of vampires. Two young women, one of them infected by the virus, travel together and struggle to stay alive. This does sound an awful lot like the same world in which I AM LEGEND takes place. The book, that is, NOT the disappointing movie. Last week I reported on the admission on the part of the latter film’s director that he should have made a film more faithful to the novel. Hopefully we will get that movie after all, just under a different name. Not that we want a carbon-copy rip-off, no, but a fresh, original narrative with the same basic premise as the backdrop. Zombie apocalypses are played-out. Excepting THE STRAIN, we haven’t seen a good vampire apocalypse in quite some time. Time to remedy that.