Will Smith reveals why he thinks I Am Legend is one of his greatest successes
He also spoke about why he does so many CGI films
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Your support makes all the difference.Will Smith has been in numerous huge hits - Men in Black, Independence Day, Bad Boys - and received Oscar nominations for his roles in Pursuit of Happiness and the biographical Ali.
Considering all the critically successful films he has been in, you may not think the 47-year-old would hold Zombie blockbuster I Am Legend one of his greatest successes, yet the actor thinks otherwise.
"I’m obsessed with trying to put small character dramas into the middle of blockbuster packages," Smith told The Hollywood Reporter. "The most successful I’ve ever been with that concept is I Am Legend.”
He went not to explain why the film attains such a high rank amongst his other work: “I Am Legend easily could’ve been a stage play, right? You know, a one-man show, a dude with a dog — you generally would think you need a little bit more than that for a blockbuster, but to date that’s my biggest opening and my second biggest film.
"So that’s an obsession for me, to not act so much that people don’t want to see it. You [can] act so much that you turn people off, or you [can] put so many creatures in it that now people don’t take the acting seriously.”
In the same interview, Smith spoke about his goal to be ‘the biggest movie star in the world’, and how him and manager James Lister came up with their strategy.
"I said to JL, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world,’ and he said, 'Okay. Well, let’s figure out what that means.' And he went and got the top 10 movies of all time, the list of the top 10 movies of all time at the box office — top 10 box office successes — and we also looked at them, adjusted for inflation and views versus dollar value. Also, we looked at all the different variations.
"What we found is at the centre, there were always special effects. So it was always special effects, there was always creatures, there was always a love story. So we started looking for movies that had special effects, creatures, and a love story.”
Smith’s next movie, Concussion, will be in cinemas on the 29 January 2016 in the UK.
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