Popular actor Keanu Reeves is set to play an antagonist in the upcoming Will Smith sequel I Am Legend 2. According to Giant Freakin Robot sources, John Wick will be flipping sides and playing a villain for once, a rarity in Reeves’s long career.
Until fairly recently, the long-gestating I Am Legend 2 seemed to be a bit of a pipe dream (especially after Smith’s shocking cancelation in the public eye last year), but it seems like things are quickly falling into place for the post-apocalyptic science fiction film.
There are few details available yet of exactly who Keanu Reeves’s I Am Legend 2 villain might be, but there are at least a few possibilities. For one, the Matrix star could be playing one of the Darkseekers, the rampaging, vampire-like antagonists of the first film; if that is the case, he would most likely be playing a leader amongst the mutants, perhaps one with ambitions of banding them together against the few remaining non-mutated humans.
However, it feels somewhat unlikely that a studio would want to cover up Reeves’s famous face under piles of makeup, so maybe not that role. Another possibility is that Keanu Reeves could be playing a leader of a group of human survivors in I Am Legend 2 that comes into conflict with Will Smith’s virologist/dog lover Robert Neville.
Post-apocalyptic fiction is full to the brim with characters who take a leadership role in the wreckage of civilization and turn it to their own advantage like pretty much everyone in The Last of Us or the Mad Max series of films. It definitely could be interesting to see Keanu Reeves as a scheming future warlord in I Am Legend 2.
Finally, a third possibility is that Keanu Reeves could be part of some remnant of human civilization in I Am Legend 2 that has fortified itself against the world and views interlopers like Will Smith with suspicion.
In that case, Reeves might be playing a villain who thinks of himself as doing the right thing, even if it takes the extermination of anyone not under his command.
These are speculation. Keanu Reeves joining I Am Legend 2 as a villain is an interesting turn for the actor, who is best known for his iconic roles in the Matrix and John Wick franchises, in both of which he played relatively heroic figures.
He has rarely played a bad guy in a film, with the 2013 martial arts film Man of Tai Chi (also his directorial debut) being a notable exception. However, everyone likes to stretch sometimes, so good for Keanu for mixing it up.
