Cinescape Exclusive
Saturn Exclusive: Dean Devlin on
INDEPENDENCE DAY 2
Hints spirit of September 11 inspired return

Dateline: Thursday, June 13, 2002

By: CHRISTOPHER ALLAN SMITH
By: News Editor


At the 28th annual Saturn Awards this Monday, INDEPENDENCE DAY co-creator Dean Devlin gave us a quick, exclusive interview about the recently announced INDEPENDENCE DAY 2, and what inspired him and DAY partner Roland Emmerich to get to a sequel for their biggest hit.

“I think we’ve finally found a concept we like,” Devlin told us.

“Something Roland and I are very excited about, and we’re now trying to work it into a movie and hopefully we’ll start writing the script sometime in the next year. What we didn’t want to do was do the first film over again. So many sequels make the mistake of trying to make the first film over again. So we always used as an example was what James
Cameron did with ALIENS or the way George Lucas handled the first three STAR WARS films. Each one had its own unique voice. It took awhile for us to come up with that voice, but after September 11, we were able to come up with a unique take that was appropriate for the film.”

Devlin did then confirm it was the wave of feeling in the country after the September 11 tragedies was something that played into the development of the ID4 2 story. He did, however, want to make clear despite the STAR WARS and ALIENS examples, he and Emmerich don’t have an elaborate plan for several sequels (don’t forget Cameron’s
ALIENS on Earth idea).

“The big point for us was the first film was never intended to have a sequel,” Devlin said. “We didn’t want to jam one into it. So when an idea came up which really felt organic to the story we were trying to tell, we got really excited. It’s not really beyond the second film. I don’t think this is franchise building. We wanted to wait until he had an idea where we said, ‘That’s worth doing.’ I think we finally have it. We’ll know better when we start writing the script. I think there was something in the culture the first movie touched on that went beyond spaceships and buildings blowing up. And after September 11, there was something in the culture that reminded us of the message of the movie and how people came together. We were deeply effected about that. We were asked a lot of questions in the press in relation to seeing those images. So it spurred a lot of discussion, and out of those discussions came a way of doing the film. And we move from that.”