Maika Monroe made a significant splash in Adam Wingard’s THE GUEST last year, but she really broke out as the bedraggled lead in this year’s surprise indie horror hit, IT FOLLOWS. It only makes sense that someone would scoop up the 21-year-old actress for a big mainstream tentpole.
Cue Roland Emmerich:
I have another addition to announce. The beautiful & talented Maika Monroe is officially signed on 2 the Independence Day Sequel!
— Roland Emmerich (@rolandemmerich) April 27, 2015
The prevailing wisdom is that she’ll be playing Bill Pullman’s daughter, who we know is a character in the film (Liam Hemsworth is playing her fighter pilot beau). That would place her as one of the female leads, if not the female lead, which would give her the most exposure she’s had so far by an incalculable margin.
Monroe had this grounded, human presence in both Wingard and David Cameron Mitchell’s films, which makes me really hope there’s enough for her to do in the current ID4 2 script to be worth her time/effort. There are a number of relatively strong female characters in the original film, like the ones played by Mary McDonnell, Margaret Colin, and Vivica A. Fox, but they (like Monroe’s character, if everyone's assumptions are correct) are primarily defined by their relationships to men. I don’t want to see Monroe sitting in some military base somewhere looking worried during Hemsworth aerial action scenes; I want to see her being at least as pro-active as she was in THE GUEST and IT FOLLOWS, so hopefully Emmerich is going to utilize her talents in a way that justifies getting someone of her talent.
Wouldn’t it be great to see a woman kicking E.T.’s ass for once this time around?
INDEPENDENCE DAY 2 re-welcomes them to Earth on June 24th, 2016.
