Roland Emmerich sat down with Emprire and shared some details about his next films. INDEPENDENCE DAY 2 was at one point rumored to be in the directors slate of projects. The first film made $800 million, so there is no doubt interest in a sequel from Fox, the question is when.

Here is what Emmerich had to say:

“Independence Day 2 is nowhere. It’s back and forth, back and forth. There’s no script because I don’t want to write anything before anything starts...One day it will happen.”

The next film for Emmerich will be the long-gestating Isaac Asimov’s CG filled space odyssey, FOUNDATION based on a script from Robert Rodat. The director had the following to say:

“We’ve hired a production designer and it’s mainly now to find out what the movie will cost. It’ll take us until the end of March, then we’ll decide. The studio’s happy with the script, but now’s the time that the numbers count. I want to make a movie that’s very different from other science-fiction movies and I don’t want to have the burden of too big a budget."

Emmerich's next film to hit theaters will be the  political thriller ANONYMOUS and had the following to say:

“Sony was very happy with the results of 2012 and wanted to keep me at the studio, so I said 'Okay, do Anonymous with me.’ It’s great when you’re coming from a big movie and it feels like you reconnect with why you’re making movies. The Patriot was a different kind of movie, but similar in a way - I just like to dive into another time. We cover the Essex Rebellion so there is some action in it, but the biggest action is in Shakespeare’s plays.”

John Orloff  penned the script, which is set during Elizabethan times and gives a new take on the Shakespearean authorship question – one in which Shakespeare didn’t actually write any of them. This has caused a number of attacks on the film. Here is what Emmerich had to say:

“We knew from the beginning that they’d be so many attacks on the film, so we said that we’d have to be as authentic as possible. We looked at other films and realised that filmmakers, because of a lack of money or because of the time the films were shot, they’d use what they could get."

"It was mainly churches, but who lives in a church? So we said, 'Let’s not do that – let’s be as authentic as possible with the design costumes.' Because of that we didn’t use any original locations – we built everything, because there’s very little left anyway – and we had to do it for a budget.”

ANONYMOUS will be released on September 30. I love alien invasion films and would love to see a sequel to INDEPENDENCE DAY. FOUNDATION sounds like a picture that will be perfect for Emmerich, so I am looking forward to seeing that. ANONYMOUS is a definite departure from his past films, but it sounds like a cool film.

What are your thoughts?