Apparently Will Smith is Too Expensive for Independence Day 2
Or “ID Forever Part 1″ as it’s possibly being called.
According to director Roland Emmerich, out promoting his new actioner “White House Down”, when that “Independence Day” sequel you’ve been longing to see finally shows up in a multiplex near you in a few years, you won’t be seeing Will Smith punching aliens and delivering a crowd-pleasing one-liner afterwards.
Why? Emmerich says Smith is too expensive and has too much of a “marquee” name, whatever that means. The director recently told NY Daily News this about the possibility of Smith returning to the franchise:
Will Smith can not come back because he’s too expensive, but he’d also be too much of a marquee name. It would be too much. We have like maybe half of the people that you know would know from the first film (in the script) and the other half people who are new.
Say what?
“Independence Day 2″ (God, I hope they don’t actually call this thing “ID Forever”) is currently set for 2015 by Fox.
I’m still not sure how this thing is going to work without Smith. Granted, his “After Earth” bombed like something that’s never bombed before, but he’s still Will Smith, and if you put him in a movie where he gets to be Will Smith (unlike “After Earth”, which was as total opposite of a Will Smith movie as you could possibly get), it’s almost always box office gold.
Or at least, it used to be.
Still, the idea of not having a scene like the one below in “Independence Day 2″ is a bit, well, disappointing. I don’t even know if it would be worth doing a sequel without Smith. Seriously, he’s THAT important to the franchise if you ask me.
