After Earth
After Earth
The film follows father and son, Cypher and Kitai Raige, who find themselves crash-landing on the abandoned Earth. When Cypher gets injured from the crash, Kitai must travel across the wild environment in search of a backup beacon to fire a distress signal, while having to defend himself from the highly evolved animals, as well as an extraterrestrial creature that detects its prey by smelling fear.
Plot
Kitai confronts many hazards; bitten by a paralytic leech after fleeing from a pack of baboon-like monkeys, he self-medicates but damages two of his capsules. After awakening, Kitai takes shelter just as the thermal shift arrives, where Cypher tells him a story about how he conceived "ghosting" to kill the Ursas.
Production
Will Smith conceived the story for the film when he was watching the television show called I Shouldn't Be Alive with his brother-in-law Caleeb Pinkett, who also served as one of the film's producers. It was originally not a science fiction story but about a father and son crashing their car in the mountains or some remote region, with the son having to go out and get rescue for his father. Smith then decided to change the setting to 1000 years in the future, which imposed a higher production budget. The film was also intended to be the first in a trilogy. Smith had his production company Overbrook contact Gary Whitta (who was then known for his script for The Book of Eli) with a simple log line for a film: a father and son crash landed on Earth 1000 years after it had been abandoned by humankind. Impressed with his idea and excited about the opportunity to work with him, Whitta fleshed out Smith's idea and pitched it to him, subsequently becoming the first employee on the project.
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