Independence Day: Wiederkehr

Soon after the success of the first film, 20th Century Fox paid Dean Devlin a large sum of money to write a script for a sequel. However, after completing the script, Devlin didn't turn in the script and instead gave the money back to the studio, as he felt the story didn't live up to the first film. It was only approximately 15 years later, that Devlin met up with Roland Emmerich to try again, having felt that they had "cracked" a story for a sequel.

A space ship that has enough mass to pull skyscrapers upwards and off of the planet's surface, should also cause huge disruptions in both Earth's atmosphere and plate tectonics, as well as in the Earth's very rotation. The damage implied in the movie is insignificant compared to what would actually happen (e.g. the seismic shockwave alone would measure hundreds of miles in the amplitude; the oceans would be evaporated; the crust would tear all over the planet, rotation axis and speed would dramatically change) and when the ship finally leaves the Earth, the planet looks quite unscathed by the "interaction".

Dedicated to actor Robert Loggia, who died in 2015.

An extended version of the movie exists and will be released later after its initial theatrical release. Director Roland Emmerich has said: "It's only about seven minutes longer. It's interesting for fans to see which scenes we cut, although I like it when movies are short." A longer special edition of the original Independence Day (1996) was also released, which ran almost two-and-a-half hours at 145 minutes with the extended cut running for 154 minutes.

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