Roland Emmerich Describes Early Version of INDEPENDENCE DAY Sequel and Teases a Third Movie

Evergreen Movie Roland Emmerich Independence Day: Resurgence about 8 years agoby Ben Pearson

Director Roland Emmerich is returning to the world of Independence Day twenty years after the original blew up the box office (and the White House) back in 1996, but what we'll see in Independence Day: Resurgence wasn't Emmerich's first thought for the movie. In a new interview with Empire, he explains an earlier version of what this film could have been:

"It was after 9/11 and [co-writer] Dean [Devlin] and I wanted to make the movie about peace, and it just didn't work. There's still an element of that in the new one, but that version was only about that. We shoot aliens down accidentally and then at the end of the movie they land on the White House lawn and say "we come in peace" and that was it. It was just too weak an idea and we didn't really want to do it. It didn't have an Independence Day feel. Only the alien ship was destroyed!"

Well, he's definitely right about one thing: that doesn't have an Independence Day vibe to it. While I'm not sure how the real movie is going to turn out (I don't have high hopes for it being great), I'm hoping it's a little better than that early idea. As for why he waited 20 years to make the sequel, he said:

"I'd never planned to make a sequel – I always felt thatIndependence Day was a standalone film. But over the years I realised how iconic the film had become for people and I was repeatedly asked by [20th Century] Fox to do it. What really did it was just how amazing film technology is these days and how restricted I felt in '95/'96 when I did the original one. But it's not a traditional sequel."

And finally, he was asked if there would be an Independence Day 3, and Emmerich teased that as a possibility: