Any sequel to Independence Day is obviously going to have to incorporate a hefty price-tag for Will Smith, which we know is an obstacle in and of itself, but Roland hadn’t mentioned till now that he’ll need to budget Big Willy twice.
Speaking with MTV about 2012, Emmerich lets on that his plans for an ID4 follow up are too huge to be contained to one explosive narrative. “What we want to do in the next, it’s actually two movies… we want to do a bigger arc…” What will Roland do with four hours to obliterate earth? Tough challenge- he’s going to have start scraping the bottom of the barrel for monuments to fuck up anyway.
Roland’s vision for the earthbound sequel is simple… “The idea is just to continue the story and actually I don’t know how many years ago this was—twelve, thirteen, fourteen years ago—and just continue where it ended.” That almost sounds like we’d get a late-90s period piece, except there is no chance that Roland won’t go present-day- how else would he pull his White House hat-trick?
Vague as all of this talk is (and honestly it’s so vague as to be nearly useless), it makes it less of a surprise that Fox has been hesitant about further developing the ID4 universe- two films makes for an enormously expensive package to greenlight. Of course, if 2012 brings in the bucks (and it very well may) then Fox might start seeing Emmerich as their answer to Michael Bay and get the ball rolling. That’s assuming Avatar leaves anything in the coffers.