Roland Emmerich on his sequel plans for Moonfall

Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster epic Moonfall will be hitting theaters next week and if it does well, we could receive a sequel before we know it. With the exception of Independence Day: Resurgence, Roland Emmerich hasn’t directed any sequels to his movies; in fact, he’s not a big fan of them in general, but with Moonfall, he left the door open for a trilogy from the beginning.

While speaking with Collider, Roland Emmerich said that he tried to make Moonfall a trilogy, but admitted that he’s not counting on a sequel as a sure thing. “I think if I do a sequel, I will make it a little bit more like the original Star Wars, the second one will have a huge cliffhanger,” Emmerich said. “Because that’s totally lost on people. Everything always has to be clean-cut. Why not leave them hanging and say, we left you hanging see the conclusion, in two years.” Emmerich added that he would film both sequels back-to-back in order to save money but doesn’t know if it will ever happen. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see how Moonfall pans out before we start theorizing about a sequel.

Roland Emmerich has previously teased that the idea for Moonfall originated when he heard about the Hollow Moon theory. “I immediately realized, oh, my God, this could very well be one of these conspiracies where you can have something really traumatic happen, meaning the moon is getting out of orbit and falling on Earth,” Emmerich said. “But at the same time, you learn that the moon is not what you think it is. It’s always a cool way to get into a movie.“

The official synopsis for Moonfall:

A mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and send it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) is convinced she has the key to saving us all, but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) believe her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is.

Moonfall will hit theaters on February 4, 2022.