Twenty years after the release of Independence Day, 20th Century Fox brought back Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman for Independence Day: Resurgence in 2016, once again directed by Roland Emmerich. The sequel ended up making far less at the box office than the previous film and wasn’t a hit with critics either, and Emmerich is taking some of that blame.
Speaking with Yahoo this week while out promoting his new film Midway, Emmerich admitted that he probably should’ve left the project at the same time Will Smith did.
Emmerich explained:
“I just wanted to make a movie exactly like the first, but then in the middle of production Will (Smith) opted out because he wanted to do Suicide Squad.”
The director continued, “I should have stopped making the movie because we had a much better script. After [Will Smith left] I had to, really fast, cobble another script together. And I should have just said ‘no,’ because all of a sudden I was making something I criticized myself: a sequel. Life sometimes happens a certain way.”
