The ‘Independence Day’ sequel was originally about peace.
Director Roland Emmerich has revealed that the early idea for the follow-up to 1996 movie was discarded because it was "too weak".
While stepping in as a guest editor for Empire magazine, he said: "It was after 9/11 and [producer] Dean [Devlin] and I wanted to make the movie about peace, and it just didn’t work. There’s still an element of that in the new one, but that version was only about that. "We shoot aliens down accidentally and then at the end of the movie they land on the White House lawn and say ‘we come in peace’ and that was it. It was just too weak an idea and we didn’t really want to do it. It didn’t have an ‘Independence Day’ feel. Only the alien ship was destroyed!"
And Roland admitted that he had initially planned to leave the movie as a standalone film but was repeatedly asked by the studio to come up with a sequel idea.
He said: "I always felt that ‘Independence Day’ was a standalone film. But over the years I realized how iconic the film had become for people and I was repeatedly asked by [20th Century] Fox to do it. What really did it was just how amazing film technology is these days and how restricted I felt in ’95/’96 when I did the original one. But it’s not a traditional sequel."
‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ stars Jeff Goldblum and Liam Hemsworth but original star Will Smith will not appear.
Independence Day sequel originally about peace
