The legend of "I Am Legend" keeps growing. The Will Smith blockbuster film, which is the third movie adaptation of the Richard Matheson's classic novel, is now close to making $1 billion worldwide, in addition to inspiring a new video game and graphic novel. The novel also wound up on best-seller lists, which is oddly only the second Matheson book to do so (the first was the paperback reissue of "What Dreams May Come," which coincided with the movie starring Robin Williams).

All this is very pleasing to Matheson, but it feels strange to him as well. It's certainly not an overnight success story. His work includes novels and short stories that inspired such films as the science fiction classic "The Incredible Shrinking Man," Steven Spielberg's "Duel," the Kevin Bacon thriller "Stir of Echoes" and the Christopher Reeve romance "Somewhere In Time." Matheson also wrote many episodes of "The Twilight Zone," including the popular episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" starring William Shatner, which was later remade with John Lithgow in "Twilight Zone: The Movie" in 1983. He has been loved by genre fans throughout his lengthy career. But now with "Legend," which is a blockbuster movie and best-selling book, Matheson is suddenly a "hot" writer.

"It's odd to finally catch on at the age of 82," Matheson said. "I don't mind it, but I've been writing good stuff for the last 40, 50 years. I've always been able to support my four children, but adulation, which I'm getting now, came a little bit late in the day."

Then again, he hasn't been completely unknown his whole career. Two of the best known members of the Matheson mutual admiration society include Stephen King, who corresponded with Richard before "Carrie" was published, and Spielberg, who loved Richard's work since "The Twilight Zone," and of course directed the TV movie adaptation of "Duel."

Matheson is happy "Legend" recently made the best-seller list, because he doesn't have a piece of the current movie, but still gets book royalties from it. He's also fine with the story being made into a full-length video game, too, because he'll get a piece of the action with that as well (Warner Bros. launched a multiplayer "I Am Legend" game on Second Life to promote the film). Not to mention he's also pleased with the graphic novel adaptation, which was faithfully written by "30 Days of Night" author Steve Niles and stuck with the original story word for word.

Matheson gave the Mark Protosevich screenplay for "Legend" his blessing, but the final film went through some rewrites from Oscar-winning screenwriter Avika Goldsman. What does he think of the finished film? "It's really not my novel, but it was very well done," Matheson said. "And I thought Will Smith was excellent. He conveyed the sense of loss for his family that I had in the book and I thought he did that very well."

The inspiration for "I Am Legend" came when Matheson saw "Dracula" at the age of 16. "When I left the theater, I thought, 'Gee, one vampire is scary...what if the whole world was full of vampires?'" He didn't get around to writing the story until 1952, and it was published as a short story in 1954. "When I set it in the future, 1976, that was the future," Matheson said.

Matheson tries to put himself in the position of the main character of all his stories, and he placed "I Am Legend" in the tract-housing neighborhood he lived in at the time in Gardenia, California. Matheson, who has written in the horror, sci-fi and fantasy genres, combined horror and sci-fi with "Legend." "In 'Legend,' everything is explained in a scientific way," Matheson said. "I explained vampires psychologically and biologically."

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