Producer Dean Devlin told
Cinescape Online that the events of Sept. 11 helped spur him and partner Roland Emmerich to reconsider mounting a sequel to their SF hit film "Independence Day".
"The big point for us was the first film was never intended to have a sequel," Devlin told
Cinescape. "We didn't want to jam one into it. So when an idea came up which really felt organic to the story we were trying to tell, we got really excited. It's not really beyond the second film. I don't think this is franchise building. We wanted to wait until he had an idea where we said, 'That's worth doing.' I think we finally have it. We'll know better when we start writing the script. I think there was something in the culture the first movie touched on that went beyond spaceships and buildings blowing up. And after Sept. 11, there was something in the culture that reminded us of the message of the movie and how people came together. We were deeply affected about that. We were asked a lot of questions in the press in relation to seeing those images. So it spurred a lot of discussion, and out of those discussions came a way of doing the film. And we move from that."