Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day 2 is tentatively set to be released on July 3, 2015, but that could hit a snag due to the fact that the director still doesn’t know if Will Smith will return to star and he hasn’t even seen the script yet. Despite those two tiny, insignificant issues, Emmerich is pretty positive that ID4EVER is still going to happen in a timely manner – whatever, it’s already been 20 years – but he’s not so sure that there will be a third installment as he had hoped.
In a new interview with Empire, Emmerich puts the decision to film a third Independence Day on us, the audience, as he promises it won’t happen if we think the sequel sucks.
“You have to set a release date otherwise another film moves into it,” he explains. “[But] Independence Day is my next movie, if I get the right script. I should get the script pretty soon, then I’ll try to get it into good shape for one or two months, and if that happens, we’ll announce it and start production.”
According to Emmerich, the plan remains for a cliffhanger to divide the two sequels. Intriguingly, he’ll eschew the Peter Jackson approach of shooting both films at once in favour of a costlier suck-it-and-see strategy. “We’ll only do the first part,” he says, “because we want to have the audience decide if they want to see the second, otherwise it feels arrogant. But I’m pretty confident, with the right script…”
It’s almost as if White House Down being a domestic bomb – instead of just da bomb like it should be – has humbled Emmerich a bit and made him realize that a lot of people are kind of tired of his ridiculously over-the-top action films, as he even admitted that this second time around the aliens aren’t going to fall for the old computer virus email trick.
Still, if he wants to guarantee at least a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Emmerich will not only convince Will Smith to make a cameo, but he’ll have his whole family torn to shreds by aliens in the movie’s opening minutes. Standing ovations galore!
