What Will Smith has to do with Roland Emmerich’s biggest flop
TV Spielfilm also wrote about the action hit “Independence Day 2” at the cinema release: “A film based on an old recipe, which despite all the spectacle (and the usual joke at its own expense) scrapes along the abyss of boredom here and there. In the end, Emmerich & Co., by the way, left the door open for another sequel. If nothing came of it – the world wouldn’t end.”
The enthusiasm also fell by the wayside worldwide. With 389 million US dollars, the film could not meet the expectations of the studio, which is why the originally planned third part seems to be as good as dead today.
But Emmerich was in a quandary, which was triggered by none other than Will Smith, the star of the first part. The director said, “I’m proud of Independence Day 2: The Resurrection, but we had a problem. Will Smith decided to pull out while we were getting ready. That hit me hard. At that point, I had to I decide: do we continue or not? We had already invested ten or twelve million US dollars, so you don’t get out of it lightly. […] I had two young writers and we locked ourselves in my New York apartment because one of them couldn’t leave New York. He had a TV series there. So we wrote the new script within two weeks. We had to. There were daily calls with Emma Watts, the President of Fox.”
Two weeks for a film that would become an international blockbuster. Since logic holes and flat dialogues make sense. Emmerich can now do better with “Moonfall”, which will start in cinemas on February 10th.
This article first appeared on TVSpielfilm.de.