20th Century Fox is currently planning to release Independence Day 2 in theaters in Summer 2016 - the twentieth anniversary of Roland Emmerich’s original alien invasion blockbuster. Will Smith is still not expected to return for the sequel, though Smith’s former costars Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum – whose recent onscreen appearances were in The Equalizer and The Grand Budapest Hotel, respectively – are. Goldblum, in fact, previously confirmed that he’s spoken about the project with Emmerich and co-writer/producer Dean Devlin.


Goldblum didn’t have a whole lot more to offer on the Independence Day 2 situation in a more recent interview with Time (see his quote below), though at the same time he did indicate that the sequel is very much in active development - despite the lack of progress updates from anyone involved with the project over the past year.

[Regarding 'Independence Day 2'], I had a meeting and have been talking over the last several months or year with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the producer, and they’ve been cooking up and say they have a part for me in what they hope will be a plan to make another one pretty soon.

Emmerich, in the past, has said that the Independence Day sequel will pick up in real-time after the first installment – with humanity having managed to harness the extraterrestrials’ technology before the remainder of the space invader army shows up on Earth – and will expand the mythology of the invading aliens. If all goes well, then a third Independence Day movie could follow on the heels of the second film, but first the sequel needs to actually be made – and for now, Goldblum has admitted that even that’s not a certainty, as far as he knows.

I think you’ve put your finger on it. “Nebulous until actually” is what that file is under, but yeah, they’re still talking about it and I’ve heard recent rumblings here and there about it, and “Oh, there’s a scripting coming in” — maybe last weekend there was a script handed in, so it’s brewing.

independence day 2 release date 2016 Jeff Goldblum On Independence Day 2 Status & Script Development

Screenwriter Carter Blanchard, who penned the upcoming Mark Millar comic book film adaptation Kindergarten Heroes, was recruited to revise the Independence Day 2 sequel script earlier this year. Goldblum’s latest comments suggest that a fresh script draft was recently completed (either by Blanchard or another scribe), so it may not be long before we get a more definite update on the project’s status – including, whether it has been formally green-lit by Fox yet or not.

The Independence Day sequel will reap the benefits of improvements in effects and filmmaking technology made over the course of the last two decades, but it shall also have to contend in a very different movie landscape than its predecessor faced in the mid ’90s. Emmerich also plans to reboot the Stargate film series down the line, but if Independence Day 2 fails to get off the ground – or under-performs at the box office – then the filmmaker might have to cut his trip down nostalgia lane short.

Independence Day 2 is currently scheduled to reach theaters on July 1st, 2016.