Why Will Smith is ‘too expensive’ for Independence Day 2

Director Roland Emmerich has expanded on why it might be too costly to cast Will Smith in the upcoming ‘Independence Day 2’.

While the German was promoting ‘White House Down’ – which is out on DVD this week - Yahoo Movies asked if the A-list star’s complex contracts could stop him being in the sci-fi sequel.

“Absolutely. And not only his salary, his back-end,” said Emmerich.

['Independence Day 2' gets a release date]

Back-end deals traditionally involve movie stars receiving a percentage of box office gross. Smith is still such a star that he can demand these kind of deals before committing.
 
“20 Century Fox [the studio making ‘Independence Day’] is kind of fighting back-end at the forefront of all the studios,” said Emmerich. “They cannot pay 25 percent to Will Smith, if they do, they will not do the movie.”

The director previously said that there are "two versions" of the script - one with Smith, and one without.

Emmerich speculated that the ex-‘Fresh Prince’ star’s huge contracts have actually stopped his movies being profitable.

“I think in ‘Men In Black 3’, he probably made more money than the studio. I would even guess that the studio lost money.

“The movie made like $600 million nearly, worldwide in box office. But it’s [only] $300 for the studio for a movie that cost $250, plus £100 million or $120 million in advertisement. And then on top of that comes the $50 or $60 or $70 million they have to pay to Will Smith and the producers. I think they lost money on that!”

He said the collapse of DVD sales was to blame to tightening margins. Often only a proportion of the DVD sales (say, 35 per cent) will go into a star's pocket if they have a back-end deal, with studios keeping the rest. This made DVD a “cash cow” for studios. 
 
“That’s where they make their money. And now that’s done. Forget it. It’s a fraction. Now the economics are different.”
 
Even if Will Smith is not involved, Emmerich is clearly excited by making ‘Independence Day 2’ – especially with the latest computer technology.
 
 “When I did ‘2012’ I almost realised how far visual effects had come along,” he said. “They are far superior than they were in like 1995/96 [when the first film was made].
 
“I said to myself we should work on the next ‘Independence Day’ because today we can do such incredible images. ‘Independence Day’ is about something so incredible happening. When you have talent for knowing what looks big and what looks not big in a movie, that’s like kind of why I want to do it. I’ll show you what a real invasion could look like.”

He said the Oscar-winning special effects in the 1996 film were full of compromises that wouldn’t happen today.
 
“When I invented these huge spaceships they were all models and we had a tough time to shoot them. I wanted to show these spaceships come into our atmosphere and then they would totally start glowing and have these clouds around them. We could only do them with limited cloud tech stuff, which was pretty much like salt water injected into in a fluid [i.e creating real, mini clouds]. Today you can create like cloud simulations, as many as you want!”

One sequel we shouldn’t expect from Emmerich any time soon is a follow-up to apocalypse epic ‘2012’.
 
“You wouldn’t believe they came to me with this idea and said ‘can we not do ‘2013’’? I said are you guys f***ing kidding me?”
 
‘White House Down’ is available on DVD now.