Summer 2015 is going to be a train wreck of a nerd movie season. A whole bunch of franchises are going to fight it out for box office supremacy, and at least one or two of them will lose. But at least one will be sitting this fight out, for a more sensible date.
Originally, it was going to be a ’90s nostalgia fight: Independence Day 2 was going to be going up against the next attempt to get us to care about the Terminator again. But Fox decided they had a better chance beating up a cartoon:
Fox said today that it is moving the long-in-coming sequel from July 3, 2015 — a date it had announced in June — to July 1, 2016. That means the Roland Emmerich-helmed pic will arrive exactly 20 years and one day after the blockbuster original, which made a movie star of Will Smith.
This means it’ll be up against the Angry Birds movie, provided nobody realizes that movie will be coming about five years too late and just cancels it.
It also means that the movie might be able to lock down a cast that makes sense; it seems to be up in the air whether Michael B. Jordan or Will Smith will be playing the obligatory military hero. Considering Smith’s recent career trajectory has reduced him to working with M. Night Shyamalan, it’s possible that Smith might be more amenable to coming back for the sequel.
That said, I’m a bit skeptical that there’s any demand for a sequel to a remake of Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, but I guess we’ll find out in 2016, and at least putting it out on the twentieth anniversary makes a lot more sense. Just make sure you bring Brent Spiner back, guys.