Francis Lawrence, you have totally missed the point. Yes, The World Without Us was a book that was based on a similar premise to I Am Legend, namely the complete disappearance of humanity from the entire world. But where I Am Legend's mass extinction was mostly an opportunity for Will Smith to fight zombies, World Without Us was an academic and scientific exploration of humanity's lasting impact on the earth, and how even when we're going, our legacy will outlast us.
But Lawrence apparently looked at the book and saw a mirror, and now he and Fox will be turning Alan Weisman's intelligent book into an end-of-the-world tentpole movie. As THR puts it, "Fox is not aiming to make a documentary but rather a fictional feature buttressed by the book's science. It would, for example, show an event that would lead to man's disappearance."
Except that the book doesn't give a shit what led to humanity's appearance, and just accepts it as fact, delving instead into how long it would take all our plastic to filter itself out of the oceans, and where wildlife would finally be given a chance to return. I realize that the idea here is just to use the title and the book's recognition to create an unrelated movie, but this is just such an egregious example of Hollywood taking something intelligent and new and stamping it into its own tired mold. I like disaster movies as much as anyone--probably more than most people-- but this just feels like a a step too far.
