According to The Hollywood Reporter, The City That Sailed

follows a New York City street magician whose daughter, because of family circumstances, lives in England. In exploring a lighthouse one day, the girl discovers a room with magic candles and wishes to be reunited with her father, causing the island of Manhattan to break away and drift across the Pond.

It sounds much, much more interesting than finding out exactly how things got messed up in the run-up to I Am Legend. Of course, this being Hollywood, Lawrence can't simply film an Andrew Niccol script and have done with it — instead, says Variety, the script is being rewritten by Oceans Thirteen writers Brian Koppleman and David Levien. But even a dumbed down Niccol story sounds much, much better than I Was Legend Before I Was Legend. The film may not be their next project, since Lawrence is also talking about directing Water For Elephants, the adaptation of the Depression-era circus novel, with Reese Witherspoon starring.

Image by Notes Of Intelligence.

Obviously, director Francis Lawrence and writer Mark Protosevich are going to have to take some liberties with this book, since the Fox movie can't simply be two hours of buildings decaying and traces of civilization vanishing slowly. Early news reports suggest Lawrence and Protosevich will use the science behind the book as a jumping-off point to tell a story about a catastrophe that ends up erasing humans from the planet. It could just be another disaster movie, or it could be something much more desolate and weird. If it's anything like the first half of Legend, I'm definitely intrigued. (Just as long as it's nothing like the second half of Legend.) [Reuters]

WB shelled out a hefty seven-figure sum in a bidding war to acquire the rights to Samson, which is set in the future and retells the tale of strong-as-a-bull Samson, who's betrayed by his love Delilah. You remember: he falls asleep, she gives him a trim, and he loses all of his manly strength.

So how will it be futuristic? Not sure. Perhaps it'll be set in space and Delilah will be a robot. Scott Silver (8 Mile) is writing the script, and Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) will direct. [Variety]

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I Am Legend concept art from Warner Bros.

So much of the look of I Am Legend was outdoors. How much of that was designed in advance?

We illustrated it or key-framed it. It was an illustration of the area that we were dressing. We conceptualized how much we could visually do practically, and how it was going to be augmented in the computer.

Some of the concept art sketches look very painterly, especially the evacuation scenes.

Some of the early concepts were ... entirely created as an illustration, and then as we found the practical location, we took a picture of the location and augmented the location, and added what we needed to add to it. And altered the sky and added a grainier texture to the look.

Did you watch Omega Man?

A little bit. There was the original, with Vincent Price, and then Omega Man. It was kind of a take on both of them. But also the director Francis Lawrence wanted to make it feel like it was three years later, but it was not an apocalyptic environment. But nature takes over.

Some of the original concept art looks really bombed out. There are buildings that are just skeletons of metal.

As I came on... it was [decided] not to look so apocalyptic. It was kind of a mixture, [with] a hint of what happened in the midst of the chaos, and then nature taking over. It's been three years since the virus and the town has been blocked out. So rather than having it like Omega Man, with the streets littered with trash and stuff... things are biodegradable. Nature takes over, cleans and moves things around.

Parts of it are quite idyllic and beautiful. What was the reason for deciding to make it look less post-apocalyptic?

Not to look like all the others, and also it's a combination of rather than being him in this post-apocalyptic world, it's the natural world taking over. Nature's evolving.

Did you have anything to do with designing the mutants?

A little bit. Originally the concept was to do it live action, and there was a lot of pre-concept work done early on. And then as it didn't quite play out [as] they wanted it to. It became part of the digital world. So I was involved in some of the meetings [about] how to make the creatures or monsters still human, but a little more defined in its body structure and a little more elongated.

Did the original production designer leave because of the decision to make the film look less post-apocalyptic?

Oh no. No, not at all. It just had to do with personal family stuff.

So what are you working on now?

I'm working on Fast And The Furious 4.

That put any sort of plane crash scripts into a tailspin, although the project now appears to be back on track. Attached director Francis Lawrence has been spending the past several months directing the Will Smith meets Home Alone (really alone) epic I Am Legend. That film will be hitting screens soon, and Lawrence is moving on to adapting Survivor as his next film.

The book is set in the near future and is told in reverse order, counting backwards from the opening in chapter 47. Since the novel is told from the point of view of the main character Tender Branson, it means he's sitting alone in the cockpit of a plane, talking to himself. Francis Lawrence might just be planning on making a career out directing desperate loner films. After all, he also directed the adaptation/trainwreck Constantine, based on Alan Moore's comic book of the same name.

I Am Legend Director Developing Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor Movie Adaptation [/Film]