Will Smith ‘too expensive’ for ‘Independence Day 2,’ says director Roland Emmerich

The world will have to be saved from an alien invasion without the help of Will Smith. The actor will not be returning for Independence Day 2, director Roland Emmerich has confirmed.

In an interview with The New York Daily News, Emmerich said that smith has simply become too big a star to appear in his sequel to the 1996 box office smash Independence Day.

“Will Smith can not come back because he's too expensive, but he'd also be too much of a marquee name,” the White House Down director explained. “It would be too much.”

Still, he said that there will be some familiar faces, but wasn’t specific. “We have like maybe half of the people that you know would know from the first film (in the script) and the other half people who are new,” he said.

The interview comes just days after 20th Century Fox confirmed that ID4 2 is happening and will come out on July 3, 2015, the 19th anniversary of the first film. The studio said that Emmerich will be back to direct and produce, but gave no word on the actors who will be in it.

James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man) is working on a new script based on an idea from Dean Devlin, who co-wrote the first one with Emmerich.

“We're not doing a total reboot, we're doing something that's totally unusual,” emmerich told the Daily News. “I think some aliens will be back.”

With Smith out of the picture, ID4 fans just have to hope that Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum haven’t become ‘too famous’ either.

White House Down hits theaters on Friday.

image: Amazon

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