'Independence Day' Producer Dean Devlin To Direct His Own Disaster Movie; Plus Bill Pullman Talks 'ID4' Sequels
In the realm of global disaster films, the team of director Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin are first ballot Hall Of Famers. The pair not only collaborated on Independence Day and Godzilla, they're slowly working on putting together sequels for the former. Since those days, Emmerich has continued his reign of terror, destroying the world again in The Day After Tomorrow (above) and 2012.
Now Devlin is also continuing the trend on his own. He's just signed on to make his directorial debut in a mystery global disaster film along with Skydance Productions, run by producer David Ellison. After the jump, read more about this as well as some tangentially related quotes from Bill Pullman about those sequels to Independence Day.
Smaller news first. Pullman, who famously played the POTUS in Independence Day and reprises the office in the NBC show 1600 Penn told Crave Online he believes the sequels, rumored to be called ID Forever Part One and ID Forever Part Two, could happen without Will Smith:
The Will Smith part of it may be ongoing. but I think there's strategies for both. I like what I have to do in both of them. I'm not in an old age home in a wheelchair being wheeled out for one more moment. It's a very interesting conception of what happens to Whitmore between then and when it picks back up.
Does he feel the sequels are going to happen? He's not sure:
Nobody's holding their breath because it's been continually plagued.
Likely to happen first is Dean Devlin's directorial debut, which was announced on Deadline. Skydance spend seven figures on a spec script by Devlin and Paul Guyot. There's no word on exactly how, or where, the disaster film is set but Devlin in particular seems excited about it:
Since meeting David [Ellison], I have admired and respected his creative work an am excited for the opportunity to collaborate with him on this upcoming project. This film is very important to me and I'm so grateful for the chance to make this with people I know and consider friends.
We'll keep our eye out for information on this movie but, would you like to see the Independence Day sequels before Devlin gets behind the camera? What's left for the producer to destroy?