Intelligencer

Zombie Version of Manhattan Surprisingly Inaccurate

By Ben Wasserstein
Published Jun 4, 2006

(Photo: Robin Platzer/Twin Images)

Will Smith might want to check a map before shooting the big-budget zombie thriller I Am Legend here later this year. Warner Bros. gave the movie a green light after a rewrite by Da Vinci Code screenwriter Akiva Goldsman moved the latest adaptation of Richard Matheson’s L.A.-set last-man-on-Earth novel to the Big Apple. But it might not be the Apple you recognize. In the copy of the script we were slipped (dated December 2005), Smith’s character goes to—synergy alert!—an accurately placed Time Warner Center (he watches TV in CNN’s newsroom), but a reference to the MetLife Building pegs it as “on 42nd and Seventh,” and a mention of Balthazar has it on 14th Street. When Smith’s character pursues a possible fellow survivor of the virus that’s turned everyone else into 28 Days Later–style lightning-fast flesh-eaters, he leaps out a Macy’s window onto . . . Fifth Avenue. A Warners spokesperson says, “We are not filming from the draft you’ve obtained.”