Roland Emmerich
by Adam Rosenberg – MTV
”Independence Day.” Classic blockbuster. It wasn’t “2012″ director Roland Emmerich’s big screen debut, but it’s an epic-scale disaster flick that pulled no punches when it came to trashing the planet Earth. Nothing was safe when those aliens descended in their gigantic, city-spanning UFOs. Who can forget the iconic scene of the White House being blown to smithereens?
Released on July 3, 1996 and starring Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, it’s a bit of a surprise that the popular sci-fi flick has never seen a sequel. According to Emmerich, it’s not for lack of desire. To hear him tell it, in an interview with Latino Review, there’s a “very really good great story, a very cool one.”
So what’s the hold-up? Fox, from the sound of things. Emmerich and his screenwriting partner Dean Devlin refuse to consider returning to the story without Smith on board. It’s really best if you just read Emmerich’s words on the matter, so here you are:
“Dean Devlin and I are still set to make a sequel likely because we’ve found some sort of idea and we approached FOX and FOX has not quite figured out how to incorporate Dean’s and my deal, and Will’s (Smith) deal. Will wants to do it in some sort of a package they can live with. So it’s just been in [negotiations] now since forever, and naturally FOX says ‘Why don’t you do it without Will Smith?’ I said Will is essential for us, for this movie and actually for the audience too. And, so, it’s in limbo and lately the studios are fighting. Like gross players, and Will is a gross player and is probably the only gross player right now who’s worth his gross. So we’ll see what happens. I would love to do it.”
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