When Universal announced back in June that they were trying to get sci-fi explosions director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow) to direct a movie based on classic arcade game Asteroids, it begged the question: could a bad director a ruin a movie that was a bad idea to begin with? Well, we may never know the answer as Emmerich has announced that he ain’t directing it after all.
Emmerich recently sat down with Collider to talk about his upcoming film Singularity, which he for some reason decided to do instead of a film based around floating jagged circles. When asked about Asteroids, he said:
I was very honored that they wanted to have me as a director, and I kind of liked the script very much, but at that time I was writing with my writing partner Harold Kloser a new script called Singularity and I opted for that.
I think the most telling phrase in that quote is “I kind of liked the script very much” which sounds like Hollywood-speak for “we were going to have 25 new screenwriters rewrite the hell out of it.”
There’s no word yet on who Universal will ask next, but… does it really matter?