Home Entertainment Roland Emmerich reveals story details for INDEPENDENCE DAY sequels

Roland Emmerich reveals story details for INDEPENDENCE DAY sequels

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Much like Antoine Fuqua and Gerard Butler over in Olympus Has Fallen, Roland Emmerich and Channing Tatum will soon be trying to stop some terrorists from turning the White House into one of those corner shops where they sell everything from cheap 50c chips to cellphone chargers with White House Down (Check out the first trailer we showed you earlier).

But 17 years ago, it was quite the opposite. Then Emmerich wanted to do nothing more than reduce that building to kindling in his sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day. The film blew apart the box office just as well as it did the President’s pad, so it’s quite surprising that it’s taken this long, but we’re finally getting a sequel. Two in fact. And now we know what they’re going to be about.

EW spoke to Emmerich who confirmed claims that the new films – titled ID Forever – Part 1 and ID Forever Part 2 (which sounds like a set of movies about waiting in the queue at Home Affairs) – will take place 20 years after Will Smith’s hotshot fighter pilot went all stars and stripes on some hostile alien ass while Jeff Goldblum inadvertently created the greatest ad for a Mac that’s ever existed when he used his laptop to hack and upload a virus into an alien mothership. Their combined efforts, along with some assistance from Bill Pullman’s candidate for greatest US President ever, saw humanity win the day, but apparently not before E.T. phoned home. A distress call for more reinforcements from the alien first wave has finally reached the rest of the aliens, and they’re coming for some payback, because how dare us puny humans defend our own homeworld.

”The humans knew that one day the aliens would come back. And they know that the only way you can really travel in space is through wormholes. So for the aliens, it could take two or three weeks, but for us that’s 20 or 25 years.”

But humanity hasn’t just spent the last 2 decades listening to sad REM songs from the 90’s while we bemoaned our fates. No, we’ve been busy.

“It’s a changed world. It’s like parallel history. [Humans] have harnessed all this alien technology. We don’t know how to duplicate it because it’s organically-grown technology, but we know how to take an anti-gravity device and put it in a human airplane.”

Emmerich went on to explain that along with this new technology, we’re also going to see a whole lot of new faces. While Pullman has already signed on to reprise his role as (now ex) President Whitmore, leading man Smith will probably not be stepping back into the combat boots of Capt. Steven Hiller. Instead we’ll see a passing of the torch to the new generation, as Hiller’s stepson, Dylan (played in the original movie by Ross Bagley), will be our new lead character.

“It’s still some of the same characters, but also new younger characters; it’s a little bit like the sons take over,”

No word on Jeff Goldblum but with this and Jurassic Park 4 on the horizon, the opportunities are certainly there for him to a 90’s character revival thing.

Emmerich also explained that the two films will one overall story, with a cliffhanger ending in the first setting up events in the second [VERY SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING].

“The first one ends on a little success, but only enough to give the humans hope. And then in the second one they free themselves again [from the aliens].”

It’s a well known fact that Roland Emmerich doesn’t make fine art cinema. But if you want massive scaled, breathless action with amazing visuals, and you’re looking for less lazy filmmaking than Michael Bay has to offer, then Emmerich’s your man. In my opinion, Independence Day was the second best thing he’s ever done (Stargate for the win!) and one of my all-time favourite popcorn flicks. As such I’m really looking forward to these new films, and kind of liking what I’m hearing here. But there’s one thing that’s still bothering me though: The White House already got blown up real good back in the first film, what’s Emmerich going to blow up now?

“We’ve rebuilt. [smiles] But the aliens also do different things.”

Let’s hope those “different things” are just new and creative ways to make things go boom!

ID Forever – Part 1 and ID Forever Part 2 are currently being written by scribe James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, The Rundown, The Amazing Spider-Man) who also penned Emmerich’s White House Down.

Last Updated: March 27, 2013

4 Comments

  1. 17 years? Really?

    *world crumbles*

    Reply

  2. James Francis

    March 27, 2013 at 18:07

    Sounds cool. I wasn’t a fan of ID4 at first, but I have become a bit of a closet Emmerich supporter. I even likes 10,000BC

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      March 27, 2013 at 23:46

      Shhhh… don’t tell anybody, but I kinda enjoyed it as well.

      Reply

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