Whenever either Roland Emmerich or Dean Devlin are asked about the possibility of revisiting alien destruct-o-rama Independence Day, they tease fans with the possibility of more. There’s been chatter about a sequel (and, occasionally, two new back-to-back movies) but very little truly concrete movement announced thus far. Now Devlin is at it again, talking up what he’s been working on with Emmerich.
"We resisted doing the sequel for years because we still wanted to honour the first one. The first one gave us all careers and we really love that movie and loved the experience," Devlin explains to the Hollywood Reporter. "We didn’t want to make a movie because it was financially a good idea, we only wanted to do it when we had an idea and a concept that creatively felt like it honoured the first one – that it felt like an organic sequel as opposed to ‘Let’s just go make some more money.'"
So what has changed now? "I feel like we got it. I think it took a long time, but I feel like we finally got something that really feels like, 'That’s worth seeing as a sequel to Independence Day.” Though he refused to be drawn on what the plot might entail, he did admit that the filmmaking pair were looking to round up as many of the original cast as they could: "We’re beginning a long process of talking to everybody. We’ll just have to see what happens."
Wait and see indeed. You’ll pardon us if we take this latest “development” with less a pinch of salt and more a rock of the stuff big enough to take out an alien mothership. We figure Fox will wait and see what happens when the original returns in 3D format next year. Not that it wouldn't be interesting; just that we're not counting any alien chickens just yet.
But while we’re on the subject of Devlin / Emmerich films the pair is still burning to return to, the writer-producer also dropped the S-word… "Stargate has always had this empty hole," he confesses. "When we made the first one, we always intended on doing part two and three and we were prevented for years. And our hope is that we can get another chance at Stargate and tell the entire story we wanted to tell." Chalk another one up to the list titled Vapourware Until It Starts Shooting…