Last year, while out promoting White House Down, Roland Emmerich let slip to us that he was looking to squeeze a small project in before diving deeply into making his long-planned Independence Day sequel. With the world of ID-4 still keeping one foot in development, Emmerich has locked in Stonewall as his next film, hiring Jeremy Irvine to star.
With a script from playwright Jon Robin Baitz, Stonewall will chronicle the events around the June 28, 1969 police raid on the Mafia-owned Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village. The resulting clashes sparked a massive push in the gay rights movement, not only in the United States but also around the world.
“It’s about these crazy kids in New York, and a country bumpkin who gets into their gang,” Emmerich told us. “And at the end they start this riot and change the world.” Irvine will play a young man whose political awakening forms our conduit into these groundbreaking events.
“It’s one of these civil rights moments, like Rosa Parks,” Emmerich adds. “And very little is known about it. Even gay people don’t know much about it. There are only two books written about it. It was the first time that gay people had shown the police that they should take them serious. And when the riot police came – this has always been fascinating for me – these kids formed a chorus line and sang ‘We are the village girls, we wear our hair in curls!’ It was such a cool thing.”
Emmerich is set to start shooting this year, with the plan to finish the film even as he gears up the new Independence Day, which carries a planned July 1, 2016 release date. As for Irvine, he was last seen in **The Railway Man **and has Fallen, **The Reach **and The Woman In Black: Angel Of Death in different stages of production.