Director Roland Emmerich has expressed his regret over 2016’s Independence Day: Resurgence, the sequel to 1996’s sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day, which Emmerich also directed.
"I just wanted to make a movie exactly like the first," Emmerich explained to Yahoo Movies UK, "but then in the middle of production Will [Smith] opted out because he wanted to do Suicide Squad. I should have stopped making the movie because we had a much better script, then I had to really fast, cobble another script together. I should have just said no because all of a sudden I was making something I criticized myself: a sequel."
Independence Day: Resurgence reunited Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, who both featured in the first film. However, the sequel would end up a critical and commercial failure, taking in $389.7 million at the box office.
Emmerich’s next movie is Midway, which tells the story of the Battle of Midway, a key naval battle that took place in the Pacific during World War II following the events of Pearl Harbor. Arriving in theaters Nov. 8, the film stars Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Woody Harrelson, Mandy Moore, Aaron Eckhart, Alexander Ludwig, Nick Jonas and Dennis Quaid.