There's an interesting article online that shows how much money is being poured into the Will Smith film I Am Legend, the remake of The Omega Man and/or adapted from the novel The Last Man on Earth. They talk of the Brooklyn Bridge scene where they are reported to have spent at least US$5 million of the budget.

Well, that's the figure according to Executive Producer Michael Tadross, Yahoo News suggests that the figure is much more than that and that Internet reports, although they don't mention where, say that the real figure could be six times that amount.

It's the behind the scenes work that's impressive. It took the sign off of fourteen Government agencies to sign off the filming of the scene, a crew of two hundred and fifty, one thousand extras, one hundred and sixty members of the National Guard, four Department of Defense Humvees, three Styker armoured vehicles, four Coast Guard boats and a Coast Guard helicopter and a Black Hawk Army helicopter.

It took the lighting crews weeks to light the bridge correctly, temperatures were ridiculously low, the helicopters were ordered to do repeated test landings for FAA tests, and the city officials were all concerned that residents would get panicked seeing the events at the bridge and careful planning had to go into the entire production there.

Sounds like it's going to be huge, but you know what? The scene is a flashback in the film. That's it. I'm sure it's a healthy flashback, but flashback none the less. It looks set to provide the backstory for how he came to be the last man in the story. However we all know, expense does not make a good film.