Roland Emmerich is a busy man right now. Whilst Olympus Has Fallen is doing solid business at the box office, he's putting the finishing touches to his thematically-similar White House Down, which is arriving in cinemas this September. There's a trailer for it here.
As part of a bit of promotional work for the work, Roland Emmerich has done an interview with Entertainment Weekly, and the subject of his long-mooted Independence Day sequels came up. Turns out, they're still very much on the cards. So what's the latest on the project?
Well, Bill Pullman will be returning, although Will Smith has not signed on at this stage. The main focus is set to be his character's stepson from the first film, with the emphasis on new, younger lead actors and actresses.
Emmerich, along with co-writer Dean Devlin, has put together two screenplays, that are currently getting a bit of spit and polish from James Vanderbilt. "The humans knew that one day the aliens would come back", teased Emmerich, "and they know that the only way you can really travel through space is through wormholes. So for the aliens, it could take two or three weeks, but for us, that's 20 or 25 years".
This seems to suggest that the new films will take place somewhere around 2015 (and will have a tinge of Stargate to them). We're betting Bill Pullman's character won't be President anymore then.
Emmerich also added that "It’s a changed world. It’s like parallel history. [Human beings] have harnessed all this alien technology. We don’t know how to duplicate it because it’s organically-grown technology, but we know how to take an antigravity device and put it in a human airplane".
It's a common skill, certainly. But as Emmerich warns, it's not just the humans that have adapted. The aliens "also do different things".
When we have more news on ID Forever Parts 1 and 2 (that still appears to be the working name for the two films) we'll let you know.
See also:the plot problems with an Independence Day sequel.
Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.