'You just can't beat actually walking down the center of a New York street with an M-16,' he says. But for Will Smith, that was a small price to pay. As you might imagine, this roused the ire - and raised the middle fingers - of some inconvenienced Manhattanites. So Lawrence set about filming on the streets of Manhattan. 'When you shoot on blue screen and green screen all the time and everything is generated, it starts to look a little painterly.' 'I didn't want the city to look like a painting,' he says. He estimates that there are about 830 special-effects shots in the film, but he didn't want to rely completely on computer imaging to achieve the ghost-town effect. Matheson's novella is set in Los Angeles, but the movie takes place in New York City, which Lawrence thought made a more strikingly empty location. Next, we'll learn about the enormous undertaking of shooting on the 'deserted' streets of Manhattan. We were under-budget in production and we finished a couple days early.' That seems almost miraculous in terms of what was required to make it happen. 'We shot from September till the beginning of April. 'That started in February 2005, and we started officially prepping in May 2006,' says director Francis Lawrence.

Once Smith came aboard, they refined the concept, incorporating some elements from previous screenwriter Mark Protosevich.

Three years later, Akiva Goldsman and Francis Lawrence, who worked together on 'Constantine,' revisited the idea as character-driven, PG-rated survival story and got a green light from Warner Bros. Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas and directors James Cameron and Guillermo del Toro were variously interested or attached, and Will Smith and Michael Bay nearly made an R-rated version in 2002, but the similarly themed '28 Days Later' stole that thunder. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ridley Scott were about to shoot it in 1997 when Warner Bros. The third remake of 'I Am Legend' hit many roadblocks on the way to the multiplex. In this article, we'll outline the process of bringing this $150 million-plus movie to the screen and hear firsthand from Smith, director Francis Lawrence and co-screenwriter Akiva Goldsman.

I am legend new york