I Am......Not What You Think

So when I first began to see the previews for Will Smiths new movie I Am Legend, I have to admit I wasn't to impressed. I THOUGHT the movie revolved around a plot about a virus that wiped out most of humanity and Will Smith, who plays Robert Neville, is one of the last known survivors on the planet. He spends the the movie looking for known survivors....or so I thought.

The truth is, the virus hasn't taken out the human race, instead it has transformed them into a canabalistic race. What I didn't know is that this movie is actually based on a book by the same title, which has already been adapted to screen twice already in 1964 as The Last Man On Earth and in 1971 as The Omega Man. This movie is somewhat different from the book seeing as how the book revolves around Robert escaping vampires, which were created by the virus. After seeing a preview that Warner Bros. released with the infected people in October, I decided that perhaps this movie would be interesting and worth checking out.

And boy was I right. The first thing Warner Bros is did to market the movie was create a game that users on Second Life could play called I Am Legend: Survival. The game allows users on Second Life to play on 60 acres of Second Life land modeled after NYC. The game is an RPG/shooter game and is set in the year preceding the movie. I found this tactic to be very interesting seeing how Warner Bros is taking the typical idea of creating a video game for movies, and have placed it on an online realm in which anyone can play for no cost.

DC Comics, in association with Vertigo Comics, also created small comics that is also set before the movie takes place. Here readers get a chance to better understand the situation, characters, and events that led up to the movie.

All and all I would say that now I see this movie in a whole new light. I think it is interesting that Warner Bros. decided not to market, what I find to be, the coolest part of the movie right off the bat. Instead they began to build the hype slowly, perhaps hoping that it wouldn't die out before the movie but instead reach a peak.

Other marketing tactics include a Myspace page for the movie as well as a special web site that will only be viewable on an Apple iPhone.