Dean Devlin on why they’re doing only one Independence Day sequel for now

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Last month the long-rumored INDEPENDENCE DAY sequel finally got the greenlight from Fox, so I guess we can start prepping now for a second invasion. But you may recall that when producer Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich first started seriously talking about a sequel to their 1996 hit, they had plans for two sequels to shoot simultaneously. When Fox gave the go-ahead for a continuation, they only gave the green light to ONE film. Now Devlin has explained why we're only getting the one sequel…for now.

In an interview with Nerd Report, Devlin shared…

“We decided just to do one first to make sure that people like where we’re going. If that works well, there’s an ability to do some world building which would be really fun and interesting to do. I think Roland and everybody felt, let’s just make sure 20 years later that people still are interested. I think in our case, we started to feel that maybe we were being a little bit arrogant by assuming that we could do two movies. We said you know what, let’s scale it down. Let’s first make sure that it works for everyone.” 

I'm okay with a sequel to INDEPENDENCE DAY, but it's refreshing to hear that Emmerich, Devlin, and Fox want to make sure there is still an audience for it. I'm fairly certain it should make some major bank when it sees a release on June 24, 2016 (although we wouldn't be surprised to hear that it'll be bumped back a week for obvious reasons).

While the November 26 greenlight announcement did not confirm Emmerich’s directing deal, Devlin confirmed to Nerd Report that Emmerich is in fact back to direct, stating…

“Roland is back to direct. He developed a new script with a couple young writers and the new script is fantastic. We’re very excited about shooting.”

This does, however, push back Emmerich and Devlin’s plans for a STARGATE reboot, with Devlin sharing…

“Unfortunately, we have to wait until we finish Independence Day for that. Roland wants to direct that one too. Hopefully we go into that right afterwards.”

The script for the sequel to INDEPENDENCE DAY was written by Rolan Emmerich and Dean Devlin and then was reworked by James Vanderbilt and later re-written by Carter Blanchard. More news when we get some!