Fox Imagines a 'World Without Us' and I Can't See It Working

Please don't tell me they are giving this to Roland Emmerich

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Thursday, April 2nd 2009 at 2:49 AM

I read Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us" a little over a year ago and the book is a hypothetical look at what would happen if some sudden occurrence caused the instant depopulated of the Earth. It was a fascinating read talking about how the subway tunnels in Manhattan would flood as pumps failed which would soon cause the soil under the city to erode ultimately causing the massive New York skyline to collapse. It would talk about the failure of security features at nuclear power plants causing explosions and planet-wide pollution. How plastics will never disappear and just how long other man made artifacts would remain. The one key to the book, though, was that it contained no people. So, how exactly will Fox turn it into a feature film?

The Hollywood Reporter brings news Fox has acquired the rights to the nonfiction book for the I Am Legend duo, Mark Protosevich and Francis Lawrence to write and direct respectively. The article says Fox does not intend to make a documentary, of course, but instead wants to use the book's science to create a fictional feature showing an event that would lead to man's disappearance.

Protosevich will get to work on The World Without Us before tackling the proposed Universal/DreamWorks Old Boy remake for Will Smith to star in and Steven Spielberg to direct.

I see no way to make this thing work that would separate it from Roland Emmerich's The Day after Tomorrow or his upcoming 2009 release 2012 for Columbia Pictures. I don't even know why Protosevich and Lawrence would want to work on another end of the world scenario since I Am Legend touched upon that subject already, with a twist of course. Aren't they working on an I Am Legend prequel anyway?

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