Independence Day: Resurgence was supposed to kickstart a whole new franchise in 2016,
but a third movie hasn't materialized since then - and it likely never will.
Here's why the Independence Day series is finished for good.
While boasting an ensemble cast of familiar faces like Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman,
the breakout star of Independence Day was Will Smith.
"Welcome to Earth."
Up to that point, Smith was best known for his recording career and TV's Fresh Prince
of Bel-Air, but this movie established him as a bona fide movie star.
For years afterwards, Smith virtually owned Independence Day weekend at the box office,
starring in a string of early July blockbusters that included Men in Black, Bad Boys II, and
Hancock.
By the time Independence Day: Resurgence began production nearly 20 years later, Smith was
too busy to return to the franchise that helped make him such a screen idol.
"I had a couple of films lined up, I had Concussion and Suicide Squad, and so it was a decision,
timing-wise, between Independence Day and Suicide Squad."
In retrospect, that was kind of a no-win scenario.
Resurgence's screenwriters revised the film's script to explain the absence of Smith's character,
Captain Steven Hiller, killing him off screen before the events of the sequel.
That creative decision effectively precludes Smith from returning for any future movies,
and without its biggest, most bankable star, why keep the franchise going?
"Y'all take care, all right?
Nothin' but love for you."
When a movie makes a ton of money at the box office, it makes sense to make a sequel in
a hurry, while audiences' fond memories of the movie are fresh.
This didn't happen with Independence Day.
The first film was the top grosser of 1996, raking in $306 million.
But the sequel hit theaters in 2016, a full 20 years later, barely clearing $100 million
at the American box office against a reported production cost of $165 million.
Making things worse, the people that saw Resurgence generally didn't care for it.
It amassed a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of just 30 percent, slightly better than its
29 percent rating from critics.
A review in Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "F," calling it, quote, "disposable
and shockingly inept."
In the end, Fox lost too much money and audience goodwill on Resurgence to proceed with a sequel,
getting the message that people weren't interested.
The original Independence Day is full of talented actors, but aside from Will Smith, it's not
exactly a roster of movie stars.
Actors like Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid, Brent Spiner, and Vivica A. Fox make for a deep
bench in these movies' casts, but on their own, none of them can really carry a big-budget
sci-fi extravaganza - not even Jeff Goldblum.
"...We never had a chance."
While they make for a strong ensemble in the original movie, these actors have mostly faded
from the limelight since the first Independence Day was released.
The new young additions to the cast also failed to fill the gap in star power - including
Liam Hemsworth, best known for his supporting work in The Hunger Games, and for being related
to Thor.
Unless the producers wanted to make the third movie a full reboot, that's the cast the movie
would have to work with, and as the box office returns for Resurgence make clear, audiences
aren't eager to show up to see them.
With or without the original cast, another movie would be a big risk.
Independence Day came to fruition thanks to a team up between filmmakers Dean Devlin and
Roland Emmerich.
The duo co-wrote the script, with Devlin producing and Emmerich directing.
Both returned for Resurgence, but it doesn't look like that will happen again - at least
not for Devlin.
During an appearance at WonderCon in 2018, the filmmaker was quoted as saying,
"Currently, I personally have no plans on doing another one."
A few weeks later, he solidified his departure on The Matthew Aaron Show podcast, saying
he was backing away from working with major studios after the failure of the 2017 movie
Geostorm.
As a result, he excused himself from both more Independence Day and a reboot of his
other big franchise, Stargate.
With one of the chief minds behind the movies now out of the running, the future of Independence
Day seems unstable, if not nonexistent.
The first two Independence Day films were productions from Twentieth Century Fox - a
studio which was swallowed up in a $71.3 billion acquisition by Disney in early 2019.
That means Disney is now calling the shots behind the scenes, in total control of that
studio's old franchises, including Avatar, Deadpool, and Independence Day.
Two of those are billion-dollar franchises, and one… isn't.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the new bosses are significantly ramping down
Fox's movie production, especially when it comes to expensive projects that aren't family-friendly
or guaranteed franchise builders.
That spells bad news for another visit to this particular well.
Disney's having a hard enough time keeping interest in Star Wars going, and that's one
of the most popular franchises of all time.
Do you really think they're going to sink any work into a risky third installment of
the Independence Day series?
In the absence of viewers demanding it, it looks like there's no chance.
"We will not go quietly into the night!
We will not vanish without a fight!
We're going to live on!
We're going to survive!"
Yeah… actually?
Maybe not.
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