Will Smith has continued to turn down any potential ideas for an Independence Day sequel, despite multiple offers to reprise his role as Captain Steve Hiller.
Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment, writer and producer Dean Devlin said there were initially plans to make two sequels to the 1996 film, respectively titled ID Forever Part I and ID Forever Part II. The coinciding plots would reportedly follow Smith’s Hiller chracter as he comes into his own in a similar fashion to Rocky III.
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“He’d gotten rich, he’d gotten famous, and he had to get the eye of the tiger back, you know?” Devlin told the outlet. The story goes that Aliens then seize the opportunity to retaliate against Earth, and require a training montage that the producer said was a “chance to bring the old Will Smith out of retirement.”
While Smith initially expressed interest in the projects, he turned both offers down, with unconfirmed rumors claiming that pay disparities were potentially a factor. However, Devlin said the M. Night Shyamalan’ sci-fi film After Earth, which starred Smith and his son Jaden, may have been a part of it.
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“He was generally worried about doing sequels,” Devlin said. “I don’t know what was going on with him, but ultimately he wouldn’t do it. It was a huge disappointment.”
Co-star Vivica A. Fox previously told The A.V. Club that Smith’s absence likely was also “the one true link that was missing to the success of” 2016’s sequel Independence Day: Resurgence.
Despite Devlin’s claims, Will Smith has done a few sequels in recent years and plans to do a few more. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star announced last spring he and Michael B. Jordan were hard at work on a sequel to the 2007 post-apocalyptic thriller I Am Legend.
“This will start a few decades later than the first,” the film’s producer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman told Deadline in February, noting that I Am Legend 2 will follow the alternate version of the movie that focused on Will’s character surviving at the end of the film. “That will be especially visual in New York. I don’t know if they’ll climb up to the Empire State Building, but the possibilities are endless.”
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She continued: “We trace back to the original Matheson book and the alternate ending as opposed to the released ending in the original film. What Matheson was talking about was that man’s time on the planet as the dominant species had come to an end. That’s a really interesting thing we’re going to get to explore. There will be a little more fidelity to the original text.”
Smith has also reunited with Martin Lawrence for a fourth installment of the Bad Boys franchise, but a release date has not yet been announced.
