I was hoping that after Sam died, Anna and the boy were figments of his imagination, and that he only realized it when he saw the butterfly tattoo.

So then I'm assuming they once again passed on doing the giant constantly burning pit where all the plague victim corpses are supposed to have been dumped, including Neville's daughter?

I believe it was implied that that pack of darkseekers set that trap up intentionally as payback for his capture of the female.

I assumed that Fred was moved by the seemingly somewhat intelligent lead zombie guy who created the trap for Neville by copying what Neville had done at the nest.

Really though I just can't understand why screenwriters doing adaptations always have to mess with perfectly good stories. Why the helicopter crash? Why the happy human civilization in Vermont? Isn't the concept of a new species rising to prominence interesting enough? Isn't the idea that the last human has to die to make way for a new society to rise out of the ashes an intriguing one? Doesn't the notion of Neville having to deal with the death of his daughter, and the reanimation of his wife carry enough emotional storytelling weight? And isn't the voice of his undead neighbor calling his name out every night, while vampiric sluts splay themselves out in the street trying to tempt him out to his death sound a little more intriguing and spooky than mindless angry zombies?

Is it an ego thing? Do they end up feeling like they aren't being creatively challenged enough without reworking the basic story, or theme of a perfectly good book?

I understand that a movie and a book are two separate things and that the movie will always be different than the book. Still, is it so hard to remain true to the concepts? I don't think it has to be.

Screenwriters seldom, if ever, have any control over the scripts they write. The produced plotlines (or lack of them) are most often the result of directorial choices, producer meddling, studio demands, preview audiences, etc. Many a film has been ruined by test audiences demanding a happy ending.

Having been a writer for a large corporation, even though I haven't been a screenwriter, I've seen it in spades. People holding executive power who have opinions, but no clue about the original material, the intent of the piece, or story structure.

Blame the director, the producers, or the studio (depending on the flick)... the writers only do what they're told.

I'll have to see this and then do a comparison with "The Last Man on Earth" with Vincent Price. Hey, Marmot... I have it on DVD!

Except in this case it isn't all that long of a book, and even Roger Ebert doesn't understand why they made the changes that they did.