Latest in Independence Day 2

Fox has revealed the title of its long-time-coming sequel to the film that made Will Smith a movie star nearly two decades ago. We also have the first images from the set of Independence Day Resurgence, one of the behemoth known as the Moon Tug and another of director Roland Emmerich posing with it. Also new today is…

Linda Cardellini is set to co-star in The Founder, the biopic about the man behind McDonald’s. She will play Joan, the third wife of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), the Illinois salesman who turned the McDonald brothers’ drive-through business into a national franchise. When she met Kroc, Joan was the attractive wife of a…

EXCLUSIVE: William Fichtner has taken a lead role in Independence Day 2. Actually, he has signed with Fox to play a top general in that film and take an even larger role in the two films that will follow. This comes after Fichtner joined the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. He has been doing such good work for…

The upcoming Ang Lee-directed film adaptation of Ben Fountain’s novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk has found its squad of beleaguered Iraq War veterans, and his female lead. First off, Lee has set Makenzie Leigh to play the female lead role of Faison, a Texas cheerleader who is stunned by the powerful, immediate…

EXCLUSIVE: DeObia Oparei, the UK actor who plays Prince Doran’s captain of the guard Areo Hotah on HBO’s Game Of Thrones, has booked a role in 20th Century Fox’s Independence Day 2. The sequel to the monster 1996 original that made $811 million worldwide is currently in production in New Mexico and has a June 24…

A woman in the White House? You bet. At least in the movies. Sela Ward is set to play the current President of the United States, President Lanford, in Roland Emmerich's Independence Day 2. The CSI: NY favorite will reunite with Emmerich as they last worked together on 20th Century Fox’s The Day After Tomorrow. She…

GKIDS said today it will release Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet on August 7 in Los Angeles and New York before expanding it wide the following week. The animated pic based on the 1923 bestseller was spearheaded by Salma Hayek and features a narrative story written and directed by Roger Allers (The Lion King), with…

EXCLUSIVE: DreamWorks has pre-emptively purchased an original ghost-story pitch from Carter Blanchard, the scribe who most recently did a rewrite on Independence Day 2. I’m told that the pitch is best described as a full-on ghost story rooted in classic Amblin storytelling. Blanchard previously sold his time-travel sto…

It’s been a busy day for release-date roulette at the studios, and now Fox has made a couple of moves. The studio has moved next year’s assassin thriller Hitman: Agent 47 from February 27 to August 28, a six-month bump. The Rupert Friend-Zachary Quinto vidgame adaptation now will open against the Weinstein Co’s Ethan…

EXCLUSIVE: Roland Emmerich has been at the center of some of the biggest spec script deals I have ever written about. Usually, he’s the co-writer and some studio is peeling off millions of dollars and making huge gross commitments to one of his global-scale adventure films. Today, Emmerich has completed a spec script…

EXCLUSIVE: After spending several years looking to generate a sequel or two to the 1996 Fox smash hit Independence Day, it looks like director Roland Emmerich and co-writer and producer Dean Devlin are going to have to take on those Earth-leveling aliens without Will Smith. I’m told reliably that Smith informed the…

The world will have to wait another year for its Independence Day 2. Fox said today that it is moving the long-in-coming sequel from July 3, 2015 — a date it had announced in June — to July 1, 2016. That means the Roland Emmerich-helmed pic will arrive exactly 20 years and one day after the blockbuster original, which…