As far as summer movies go, INDEPENDENCE DAY was one of the first that I remember following from the very first teaser to the day of release. While the movie certainly doesn’t hold up as well as others, it was definitely fun seeing it on the big screen.
While news of a potential sequel to the movie have been reported for the last year or so, Dean Devlin, who wrote and produced INDEPENDENCE DAY along with ROLAND EMMERICH, recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the ID4 sequel is beginning to gain some traction.
“I can tell you that Roland and I have been working together for the first time in 11 years and we’re every excited about the idea of doing it,” Devlin said. “Whether or not we can make this happen, if we can get all the pieces to come together, that’s gonna be challenging. But creatively, for the very first time since we did the original, I feel we have a worthy concept, a worthy path to go.”
INDEPENDENCE DAY opened sixteen years ago. You would have thought a sequel to such a massive box office success would have been fast-tracked. According to Devlin, they had a reason for not jumping right into a second movie.
“We resisted doing the sequel for years because we still wanted to honor the first one. The first one gave us all careers and we really love that movie and loved the experience,” Devlin explained. “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 honored the first one—that it felt like an organic sequel as opposed to ‘let’s just go make some more money.'”
Emmerich and Devlin have both continued on with their careers. Emmerich made the derided big budget films THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, GODZILLA, 10,000 BC, and 2012 while Devlin has been working on TNT’s THE LIBRARIAN films and current series LEVERAGE.
Fox recently announced INDEPENDENCE DAY would be returning to theaters on July 3rd, 2013 for the now required 3D re-release. But, maybe that is more of a test to see if moviegoers still want to see ID4 on the big screen. No word on whether or not any of the returning cast will be involved in the new movie, if and when it gets made. The first film starred Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid and Vivica A. Fox.
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