I AM BUDGET
December 18, 2007 11:19 AM   Subscribe

What were the budgets for the previous "I Am Legend" movie adaptations? According to Wikipedia, they include "The Omega Man", "Last Man On Earth" and "I Am Omega". How much did it cost to make each of them?

Estimates online point toward the Will Smith version costing $180 million. Is that accurate?
posted by BE ADEQUITE to Media & Arts (4 answers total)
 
The only reference I could find is that "I Am Omega" was "low-budget" and straight to video. Moreover, it isn't adapted from "I Am Legend" but instead is a total ripoff of a similar concept. The studio, "The Asylum," is known for such stunts.
posted by sjuhawk31 at 11:55 AM on December 18, 2007


Wikipedia lists the film's budget at $150,000,000+. Not sure how much + though.
posted by inconsequentialist at 12:06 PM on December 18, 2007


I watched the first 15 minutes of I Am Omega... it's very much a low-budget, non-theatrical Sci-Fi channel job. (It's really bad)
posted by ReiToei at 4:29 PM on December 18, 2007


IMDB doesn't have numbers for I Am Omega but does estimate the budget for another Asylum "tie-in" - this summer's Transmorphers - at $250,000. This kinda dumb NPR interview with Asylum founder David Latt mentions I Am Omega and notes that "each film generally takes about three months to make, with budgets of less than $1 million per film." (Here's a short NYT article about Asylum, if you're interested in how they stumbled on their, um, interesting business model.)

I dunno how to get an approximation of what a low-budget studio film would have cost in Italy back in 1964, when Last Man on Earth was filmed. It was released in the US by American International Pictures, which at the time specialized in very cheap film-making and buying low-budget foreign films, for what that's worth.

Omega Man looks like a cheapie today, but at least was released by Warner Brothers, which probably gave it a significantly larger budget than Vincent Price's version. Back issues of Variety or interviews with the directors might be able to help with numbers for the two earlier films, but I think getting specifics is going to be hard.
posted by mediareport at 12:49 AM on December 19, 2007


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