Empire Online’s new guest editor, Roland Emmerich, has been answering readers questions this week. One, an enquiry about his earlier version of Independence Day 2, prompted an interesting revelation about what that film might have looked like had it been made in the early Noughties, as originally intended. "It was after 9/11 and (co-writer) Dean [Devlin] and I wanted to make the movie about peace,” he explains, "and it just didn't work.”
Before you say “Huh? Peace?!”, bear in mind that this touchier-feelier version didn’t get too far down the launchpad before Emmerich abandoned it. "We shoot aliens down accidentally and then at the end of the movie they land on the White House lawn and say 'we come in peace' and that was it. It was just too weak an idea and we didn't really want to do it. It didn't have an Independence Day feel. Only one alien ship was destroyed!”
Emmerich adds that an ‘element’ of that idea made it into Independence Day: Resurgence, albeit squirrelled away within a whole mess more interplanetary hostility.
For the next five days this very site is being guest-edited by Emmerich. Look out for lots more exclusives and insights across the Empire site, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Head back later today when he picks his ten favourite disaster movies.
Independence Day: Resurgence is out in the UK on June 23. Pick up the current issue of Empire – onsale from all good newsagents – for much, much more on the movie or pick up a digital subscription now.