Remember there was an Independence Day sequel? Unlike a lot of belated follow-ups in our franchise era, Resurgence failed to live up to its original, both critically and at the box office. You might even forget it exists. It did manage to bring back most of the original cast — even Judd Hirsch! — but it was missing arguably its biggest star. And that, one of the film’s actresses, admits that may be a big reason it failed to catch on.
“I really feel we missed out by not bringing Will Smith back,” Vivica A. Fox told The AV Club (as caught by Entertainment Weekly). “We had most of the original cast, but I think the one true link that was missing to the success of Independence Day 2 was that Will Smith wasn’t there.”
Fox, who played Jasmine, Smith’s character’s girlfriend, remembers her mindset at Resurgence’s premiere. “I was like, ‘Mmm, let’s see how the fans are going to feel about this.’ And sure enough, on Twitter they blew me up.”
The first Independence Day, from 1996, helped take Smith from a popular star to a mega-popular one. By the time the sequel finally got rolling, he was deemed too pricey to cast. So they killed off his character, which Smith thought was “terrible.”
“I was working on Suicide Squad during that time,” Smith told Yahoo! in 2015. “Roland [Emmerich, director] and I had talked about it. The trailer looks really cool. I’m going to be sitting around with tears in my eyes when that one comes out.”
Of course, nowadays Smith might be a little more easy to get.
(Via The AV Club and EW)