A sequel to the thrilling 1996 alien invasion movie Independence Day is in the works. It will be awesome even if (or especially if) it consists of nothing but Will Smith punching an alien in the face for 2 straight hours.
In anticipation of the release of the sequel next year, Uproxx compiled 6 fascinating bits of information about the first movie. Among them is the reasoning behind President Whitmore's inspiring speech before he personally led the allied assault against the alien vessels. The producers wanted the movie studio to purchase the title "Independence Day" from its owners:
When Bill Pullman’s President Whitmore gave his rousing pre-battle speech near the end of the movie, he wasn’t just rallying the troops against the alien invaders. He was also rallying them against 20th Century Fox’s marketing department.
Devlin and Emmerich were dead set on calling the movie Independence Day from the beginning, but Fox wasn’t having it. This is why the movie was called “ID4″ in so much of the promotional material leading up to release. Well, that and Fox didn’t want to have to buy the rights to the title from Warner Bros., who owned them at the time (they had released a movie with the same title back in 1983). According to the movie’s DVD commentary, the filmmakers added the line to the speech in hopes it would encourage the studio to buy the rights.
And in the current climate of wringing every bit of money out of a franchise, and especially making horrendous sequels, I can't imagine this one would be worth picking up when it is eventually released inside boxes of breakfast cereal... But hey, at least it's not a remake, or prequal, or "reboot", or "re-imagining", or similar.