A huge number of fans have revisited Independence Day over the last few days, thanks to a combination of the Fourth of July weekend and Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi blockbuster celebrating its 25th anniversary, with the filmmaker and co-writer Dean Devlin offering up plenty of new insights into the development and production of what was cinema’s second biggest-ever box office hit at the time.
We could have seen Ethan Hawke as Steven Hiller and Kevin Spacey as President Whitmore if Fox had gotten their way, with Emmerich fighting so hard to cast Will Smith that he threatened to up sticks and take Independence Day over to Universal if his demands weren’t met. The 1996 epic remains a massively entertaining slice of Hollywood spectacle, but the same can’t be said about the sequel.
Audiences waited 20 years for Independence Day: Resurgence, only to be drowned in a sea of admittedly impressive CGI, but the second installment was notably missing the heart, humor and memorable characters that made the opener such a fun time at the movies. After earning a disappointing $389 million from theaters, any plans for a third film were shelved, but in a new interview Emmerich admits that he’d love the opportunity to finally bring his trilogy to a close, or even mount a Disney Plus series.
“They have now a streaming service and they need product. I would love to do maybe a third one, or a TV show, continuing the story. When we did Independence Day: Resurgence, we already had, also, the third part already. Actually, the third part has much more to do with the first part, because we learned, more or less, that out there are a lot of refugees and they’re living on a refugee planet.
And where the aliens finally come there because, somewhat like these aliens on earth, found out about it and telepathically or whatever gave it to their super queen. They’re all humans, but in all different forms. So it’s this thing that we have Brent Spiner and Jeff Goldblum and we have them with all these different forms of people, which would be a great movie. But we’ll see what happens.”
Based on how Resurgence ended, the plan was to send a ragtag group of humans into outer space to continue the battle against their alien invaders, but that concept would no doubt need to be reworked for any potential episodic continuation given the sheer cost involved. That being said, an Independence Day show on streaming would be massive, so let’s hope it’s something the Mouse House could take under consideration.