Roland Emmerich talks about all three of his sci-fi projects.

When news broke that Roland Emmerich will be planning a new Independence Day film, it was met with mixed feelings by most of us sci-fi nerds. This would normally be joyous news, but since Emmerich has also announced his involvement in two other sci-fi projects along with a ‘reboot’ of the Stargate franchise (disregarding the much-loved Stargate SG1 series as canon), he seems to be stretched thin, especially for someone who hasn’t produced much worth remembering over the last few years.

One thing Roland “The Michael Bay of Disaster Films” Emmerich is good at though is world-building, so while we all might be sceptical regarding his recent announcements, and for good reason, you can bet your ass that this man known how to get seats in a theatre. Let’s just hope he manages to satisfy our rather extensive sci-fi appetite with all his new projects – including the two I haven’t mentioned yet, Singularity and Foundation.

This is what he had to say, in a recent interview with Empire:

“I should get the script pretty soon,” …”Then I’ll try to get it into good shape for one or two months and, if that happens, we’ll announce it and start production… We’ve created a mythology around these aliens, which is really cool. You have to create a mythology because people want to see a bigger picture.”

As for a second sequel to Independence Day…

“We’ll only do the first part,” … “because we want to have the audience decide if they want to see the second. Otherwise it feels arrogant. But I’m pretty confident, with the right script…”

Here’s what he said regarding Singularity and Foundation (which is based on Asimov’s trilogy), respectively:

“That is on very, very good grounds again, we just overdid its complexity, we packed too much in it, but we lost two or three subplots and suddenly realized, ‘Oh my God, this works!’ I definitely want to make this movie.”

“We’re trying to do it as a big mini-series,”  …”but even there you would have to change the story itself and set it in a time when the galaxy has fallen apart and then you’re pretty much making a TV show with all these characters and playing all the scenes out. You can [do that] and we’ll see what happens. We tried so hard [to make it into a movie], honestly, because it’s one of my most favorite books. I just love it.”

Well, while I’m very happy with more high budget sci-fi heading out way, Mr. Emmerich seems to be stretched a bit thin at this point so I’m hoping by some miracle that Stargate rathers gets renewed as another series. Yes please! With regards to the films and mini-series mentioned above – bring it on! These projects are still years off though, with the second ID4 film slated for 2015, which already seems rather ambitious.

Last Updated: September 18, 2013