Roland Emmerich, whose forthcoming WHITE HOUSE DOWN just got trailered, spilled some beans to EW about those long gestating INDEPENDENCE DAY sequels. The follow-ups were initially scripted by Emerich and Dead Devlin (the original film's producer and co-author), and are now being refined by James Vanderbilt (ZODIAC, WHITE BHOUSE DOWN, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN).
The piece confirms what I've been hearing for many, many years and have written about previously on this site...that the new movies will (to some degree at least) examine how humanity has been affected by the the events of the 1996 progenitor picture. More specifically, how our world has been shaped by the technology those bastard aliens left behind when we kicked their tentacled asses in the conclusion of the first film.
“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...”
...says Emmerich, who goes on to reveal a bit more about the film's setting.
The films take place 20 years after the original, when a distress call sent by the first wave of aliens finally brings reinforcements to Earth. ”The humans knew that one day the aliens would come back,” explains the director, who completed two scripts with Independence Day co-writer Dean Devlin and has given them to White House Down writer-producer James Vanderbilt for a rewrite. ”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.”
There are more details HERE, included the reveal that some level of design work is already being done (implying that the designs being studied pertain to our alien-influenced Earth), and discussion of the film's casting. Check it out.
