Part of Roland Emmerich’s concept for rebooting the Independence Day franchise involves dishing out a pair of sequels with horrible titles. The other biggest element in his masterplan to reacquaint Earthings with an alien race who want us to “diiiiiiiiiiiiie” is bringing back his stars. After all, the first outing was chiefly responsible for launching Will Smith’s film career – possibly for the alien punch sequence alone. Sadly, after much deliberation the smart-mouthed Fresh Prince has said he won’t be back. But Smith’s co-pilot in the unfriendly skies, Jeff Goldblum, seems to be involved. Sort of.
Way back in June of 2013, Emmerich said with confidence that Goldblum and Bill Pullman would be returning to reprise their roles. Since then, we’ve had much talk of Smith’s possible return, but little on the other two big hitters… until now.
“I had a meeting and have been talking over the last several months or year with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the producer,” Goldblum told TIME Magazine this week. “And they’ve been cooking up and say they have a part for me in what they hope will be a plan to make another one pretty soon.”
“Cooking up?” “Hope?” “Pretty soon?” It sounds like the sequels, which we’d assumed were definitely on the way, are farther back in the development process that we’d previously envisaged. Alas, this news may have something to do with the one key item in a movie: the script.
Our last inkling on that matter came in May, when Fox brought onboard the film’s third writer, Carter Blanchard, to do a script rewrite. During his TIME interview, Goldblum was asked on the status of ID Forever – Part 1 (see, we told you it was ghastly) and his response suggests Blanchard’s script might be finished:
“They’re still talking about it and I’ve heard recent rumblings here and there about it, and “Oh, there’s a scripting coming in” — maybe last weekend there was a script handed in, so it’s brewing.”
Again, the fact that Goldblum says they’re still talking about it, and it’s even in the “rumblings” stage, is enough to raise the red flag. We’re happy as all get out that there’s a part in the story for him, as his character comforted us all regarding what to do should an alien invasion occur. As David Levinson, an MIT-trained whiz, he demonstrated that our remedial home computing technology could still outsmart the lightyears-ahead advancements of a far superior alien race.
Are you interested in the Independence Day sequel, or are you tired of waiting? Sound off below!
