Having a hard time believing that Will Smith would return for an Independence Day sequel? So are we-- but director Roland Emmerich swears it's possible, as you can see from this interview in Digital Spy.
Talk of an Independence Day sequel has been rumbling around for years, and talk has gotten serious in the last few months, aided by the fact that Emmerich was out doing promotional duties for June's White House Down and people wouldn't stop asking him about it. At the time Emmerich said repeatedly that Smith wouldn't come back because he was too expensive, but that other familiar characters from the first film would come back. Did the failure of this summer's After Earth persuade Smith to lower his asking price and return to the franchise that made him famous?
Well… keep in mind that Emmerich is once again doing promotional duties for White House Down, this time in Australia, and is probably working extra hard after the movie flopped in the United States. This is a man who has destroyed the White House three times on film-- do you really put it past him to drop a possibly fictitious hint about Will Smith for the sake of getting us to talk about his movie again? I sure don't. And it's very possibly that Smith has opened himself up very slightly to the possibility of appearing, so Emmerich is mentioning it in the press as a bargaining chip. If enough of us seem psyched to see Smith return-- and if you want an Independence Day 2, surely you think it should involve that guy, right?-- then it might convince the megastar to show up, even in a tiny cameo.
Release date aside, I've followed this too long to assume Independence Day 2 will actually happen-- notice how Emmerich is fuzzy on the start date even in that interview. At least we'll always have Bill Pullman's speech which, unlike most things from the mid-90s, remains timeless.
