Thirteen years ago Roland Emmerich smashed the box office with his alien invasion and world destroying disaster flick Independence Day. The film gathered $811M worldwide and took home the Oscar for Best Visual Effects amongst dozens of other awards.  Naturally, everyone expected a sequel.

Now details have emerged that offer a hint at why a sequel hasn’t happened yet and, just as interesting, that one may still happen.

In a recent interview with Latino Review, Roland Emmerich explained the situation.

From Latino Review:

LatinoReview: I heard there was a script for a sequel. What’s the real reason there is no sequel?

Emmerich: Dean Devlin and I are still set to make a sequel likely because we’ve found some sort of idea and we approached FOX and FOX has not quite figured out how to incorporate Dean’s and my deal, and Will’s (Smith) deal. Will wants to do it in some sort of a package they can live with.  So it’s just been in negations now since forever, and naturally FOX says “Why don’t you do it without Will Smith?” I said Will is essential for us, for this movie and actually for the audience too. And, so, it’s in limbo and lately the studios are fighting. Like gross players, and Will is a gross player and is probably the only gross player right now who’s worth his gross. So we’ll see what happens. I would love to do it.

It seems everyone wants to do it but Twentieth Century Fox doesn’t agree with how much the key players should be paid and, it seems, the pivotal player we’re talking about is Will Smith.

So if Twentieth Century Fox conclude Will Smith’s chunk of revenue is a worthy investment, is there a story worthy of investment?

Emmerich: Oh yeah! There’s a story. There’s a very really good great story, a very cool one.

Hopefully “a very cool one” means “one devoid of computer viruses”.

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