Will Smith Unlikely for Independence Day 2

With his film White House Down approaching release director Roland Emmerich has been naturally fielding questions about the two planned sequels to his 1996 blockbuster Independence Day. The topic of whether Will Smith will be on board to star was broached with Emmerich dismissing the possibility.

“Will Smith can not come back because he’s too expensive, but he’d also be too much of a marquee name,” said Emmerich. “It would be too much.”

Throughout the process the prospect of bringing back Will Smith seemed both necessary yet increasingly unlikely due to his price tag – which curiously most wouldn’t think to be much of a concern given how much he would mean to the potential earning power of the sequels.

Apparently Fox believes they’ll make more on non-Will Smith Independence Day sequels than if he were featured in them. Whether that is just posturing or not there is likely more to the decision than they’ll speak about publicly. Some actors will return from the original including Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum. July 3, 2015 is the planned release date for the first sequel. Plot details below as described by Emmerich back in March:

The films take place 20 years after the original, when a distress call sent by the first wave of aliens finally brings reinforcements to Earth. ”The humans knew that one day the aliens would come back,” explains the director, who completed two scripts with Independence Day co-writer Dean Devlin and has given them to White House Down writer-producer James Vanderbilt for a rewrite. ”And they know that the only way you can really travel in space is through wormholes. So for the aliens, it could take two or three weeks, but for us that’s 20 or 25 years.”