Independence Day 2: Director Roland Emmerich Reveals Will Smith NOT Returning For Alien Movie Sequel
Independence Day 2 director Roland Emmerich gave an interview to the New York Daily News on Saturday and revealed that Will Smith, who starred in the original blockbuster alien movie Independence Day in 1996, would not return for the upcoming sequel in 2015.
"Will Smith can not come back because he's too expensive, but he'd also be too much of a marquee name," Emmerich said. "It would be too much. We have like maybe half of the people that you know would know from the first film (in the script) and the other half people who are new."
Deadline reported that Independence Day 2 would be released on July 3, 2015, exactly 19 years after the original film in which Smith starred.
The film turned Smith into a mega movie star and was one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, blockbusters of the year.
There are actually two sequels to Independence Day in the pipeline, according to Screen Rant, and the films would be called ID Forever Part I and ID Forever Part II.
Emmerich, who directed the first Independence Day, revealed the following plot details to Entertainment Weekly:
"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."
He also spoke about the setting and the world of the sequels:
"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 antigravity device and put it in a human airplane."
Emmerich also said the sequels would focus on the new generation of heroes:
"It's still some of the same characters, but also new younger characters; it's a little bit like the sons take over. 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]."
Furthermore, Emmerich said the humans have "rebuilt...but [the aliens] also do different things."