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Nerdist Special Reports

The INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE Cast on Why Now’s the Perfect Time for a Sequel

On nearly every Fourth of July, my friends and I have had a time-honored tradition of filling our bodies with as much barbecue as humanly possible then plopping down on the couch and watching Roland Emmerich’s 1996 classic Independence Day. With its incredibly charismatic cast, bombastic action, endlessly quotable one-liners, and the greatest presidential speech of all time, Independence Day is like cinematic comfort food. So, naturally, when 20th Century Fox announced it was going to produce a sequel entitled Independence Day: Resurgence, I was more than a little concerned.

With twenty years separating the two films, there’s an awful lot of ground to cover. Could they recapture the same magic as the original film, especially without Will Smith reprising his role? How could they evolve the story in an organic way? Will we get anything nearly as awesome as “Welcome to Earth”? In order to get to the bottom of this all-important question, I sat down with the cast and crew of Independence Day: Resurgence — including Roland Emmerich, Brent Spiner, and Vivica A. Fox while visiting their Albuquerque, New Mexico set last year.

Honestly, though, as long as they have Jeff Goldblum on their side — and his improvised theme song skills — I’m confident that everything will be a-okay.

Independence Day: Resurgence arrives in theaters on June 24, 2016.

Do you think now is the right time for another Independence Day? What do you think the film needs to do to succeed? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. You can follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).

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