Fox explores 'The World Without Us'

Zap2It.com | April 2, 2009

Francis Lawrence

Studio buys rights to book about post-human world

Fox is ready for the world to end.

The studio has bought the rights to Alan Weisman's 2007 non-fiction book, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The book posits a single but fascinating question: How would the environment react if the human race disappeared overnight? To find a hypothetical answer, Weisman follows the return of plant and animal life as cities slowly fall into disrepair.

Interestingly, THR claims Fox wants to make a fiction-based movie, and in doing so would focus instead on the final days of the human race, bolstered by the findings in Weisman's book. That may be to distinguish it from the 2008 History Channel special "Life Without People," also inspired by Weisman's work.

Francis Lawrence, who covered similar ground in 2007's "I Am Legend," will direct.