Over the years, when producer
Dean Deviln and director
Roland Emmerich have spoken of a sequel to
Independence Day they've mentioned that they would like to do two more films and make it a trilogy, but when
Deadline reported that 20th Century Fox gave
Independence Day 2 a green light it emphasized that Fox only gave the okay for one sequel, not two.
Nerd Report recently spoke with Devlin and asked him why that is.
“We decided just to do one first to make sure that people like where we’re going, If that works well, there’s an ability to do some world building which would be really fun and interesting to do. I think Roland and everybody felt, let’s just make sure 20 years later that people still are interested. I think in our case, we started to feel that maybe we were being a little bit arrogant by assuming that we could do two movies. We said you know what, let’s scale it down. Let’s first make sure that it works for everyone.”
The original film helped elevate Will Smith's acting career to A-list status, so it surprised many fans that he wasn't going to reprise his 'Captain Steven Hiller' role. Devlin says he met with Smith many times and even though Smith "seriously" considered it at one point "he decided that doing this wasn’t right for him.”
Another curious thing about Deadline's report is that they mentioned Roland Emmerich, who directed the 1996 film, hadn't officially signed on for the sequel, but Deviln can now confirm, Roland is back to direct."
Now that Devlin and Emmerich are moving forward with Independence Day 2 that means their reboot of Stargate will have to be pushed back, but it'll probably be their next project. Devlin explained, “Unfortunately, we have to wait until we finish Independence Day for that. Roland wants to direct that one too. Hopefully we go into that right afterwards.”
Independence Day (1996) - One of the biggest box office hits of all time delivers the ultimate encounter when mysterious and powerful aliens launch an all-out invasion against the human race. The spectacle begins when massive spaceships appear in Earth's skies. But wonder turns to terror as the ships blast destructive beams of fire down on cities all over the planet. Now the world's only hope lies with a determinded band of survivors, uniting for one last strike against the invaders - before it's the end of all mankind.