Roland Emmerich's upcoming Independence Day 2 is bringing back a number of stars from the 1996 original, including Bill Pullman, Vivica A. Fox, Judd Hirsch, and Brent Spiner, but it would appear that the production plays favorites when it comes to Jeff Goldblum. How to we know this? Because the offices actually have a shrine dedicated to the actor.
Producer Dean Devlin took to his personal Twitter account earlier today to shine a very weird light on the behind-the-scenes action going on behind Independence Day 2. Evidently, one wall in the production office is dedicated to a collection of both photographs of the actor and artistic interpretations of his form. If you look at the image full size, you'll notice that some of the pieces do get a bit abstract (specifically the one that has him with a bald, round head and blue skin).
The centerpiece, however, is the painting of Goldblum half-wearing a shirt while laying in a meadow and courting a butterfly on a stormy day. Of course, it takes heavy inspiration from a particular moment in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park... a moment that was actually made into a giant cutout and photographed last year in the production offices of Jurassic World:
People really, really do love Jeff Goldblum.
In Independence Day 2, Goldblum will be reprising his role as David Levinson, a genius and abstract thinker who teamed up with Will Smith's Captain Steven Hiller in the first movie to destroy the alien forces invading Earth. At this time it's unclear what his role in the sequel will be, but it's understandable that people might turn to him for answers when the extraterrestrial menace returns.
The Roland Emmerich-directed sequel will pick up 20 years after the first movie, and show a world that has actually benefited in some ways from the alien invasion because of the advanced technology that was left behind. What they don't suspect, however, is that a distress signal was sent out by the aliens before their destruction, and now back-up forces have arrived to finish the job the first crew couldn't. Maika Monroe, Liam Hemsworth, Jessie Usher, Joey King, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Sela Ward are all aboard the film as newcomers, joining all of the returning stars mentioned earlier. Twentieth Century Fox has lined up the film to be released on June 24, 2016, and while production hasn't started quite yet, cameras are expected to start rolling within the next few weeks.
