How did the novel "I Am Legend" end?

Search: the omega man; i am legend

Why: In "Changed film endings": [spoiler alert, durr]

I Am Legend

The end of Will Smith's apocalyptic blockbuster sees his character Robert Neville sacrificing himself to ensure his companions get the cure for a deadly virus that has plagued the world. As endings go for a Will Smith action blockbuster it's darker than usual and not the feelgood one studio bosses would have preferred to give their audience. However, it's the ending that was suggested after the original denouement received negative feedback at test screenings.

The original climax, aping the message from the classic book that it was based on, had Neville realising at the end that he was in fact the problem. The 'vampires' had been trying to rescue the creature that he had kidnapped earlier in a bid to find a cure. Will Smith as the bad guy. Not very satisfying for his fans.

Answer: Like they said! First, he finds that other girl and bangs her. The following morning:

Ruth agrees to let him take a blood test on her. She knocks him out just as he realizes she is infected. When he wakes up, Neville discovers a note left by Ruth. In it, she tells him that the infected have slowly been able to adapt to their disease to the point where they can spend short periods of time in sunlight, and they are even attempting to rebuild society. They fear and hate Neville since he has unwittingly destroyed some of their people along with true vampires (dead bodies animated by the 'germ') during his daytime excursions and view him as a predator. In their quest to capture him, the infected sent one of their own to Neville.

Neville meets Ruth again in his prison; she informs him that she is a ranking member of this new society, but unlike the others, she doesn't fear and hate him. She tells him she had come to his prison to try and help him escape, but that is now impossible. She acknowledges the need for Neville's execution and slips him pills, claiming they will 'make it easier.' Emotionally broken, Neville finally accepts his fate and tearfully asks Ruth not to let this society get too brutal and heartless. Ruth kisses him and leaves.

Neville goes to his prison window and gets a glimpse of all the infected milling around in the yard, waiting for his execution. When they spot him, he sees the fear, awe and horror in their eyes, and he understands to them, he is a scourge, just as they were a scourge to him at the beginning of the novel. Previously, Neville saw the destruction of the infected survivors as a right and a moral imperative to be pursued for his own and mankind's survival, but now, he finally acknowledges defeat. He is the only known immune human left in the world, the only survivor of the "old race."

He glimpses a future society where infection is normal and he, Neville, is a murderous biological deviant. As he turns away and swallows the pills, Neville grasps the reversal that has taken place: that just as vampires were legend in pre-infection times, now he, an obsolete exemplar of old humanity, is legend in the eyes of the new race born of the infection. The sheer ridiculousness of it all causes Neville to chuckle as he dies, his last thoughts being "[I am] a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend."

Crazy!

Remember that sad sad scene with the dog? Also, have you seen any of the other 3 adaptations that are probably way better? I haven't.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: The guy that wrote the novel is Richard Matheson, aka Logan Swanson. He also wrote the novels What Dreams May Come and The Shrinking Man and the screenplays for The Last Man on Earth (a 1964 I Am Legend adaptation) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). He also wrote a bunch of "Twilight Zone" episodes and the 1983 feature film, and a shitton of other things, too. One of his sons wrote a bunch of episodes of "The A-Team" and "The Torkelsons,"* and another one wrote both Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, which just happens to be my favorite movie. His daughter is also a prolific writer.

*If you are someone I know and you also watched "The Torkelsons," please let me know right away.