Back in July 2012, Independence Day writer-producer Dean Devlin revealed that he and director Roland Emmerich were planning a two-part sequel to their 1996 blockbuster Independence Day. Those plans changed in October 2013, when Independence Day 2 became just one movie. After nearly 20 years, the project is finally moving forward, with 20th Century Fox issuing a green light for production to start in May 2015. During a recent interview with Nerd Report, Dean Devlin explained why they decided to ditch their plans for a two-part sequel, confirming that Independence Day 3 is on hold, and that their Stargate reboot, which will actually be a remake, will most likely shoot directly after Independence Day 2.

"We decided just to do one first to make sure that people like where we're going. If that works well, there's an ability to do some world building which would be really fun and interesting to do. I think Roland and everybody felt, let's just make sure 20 years later that people still are interested. I think in our case, we started to feel that maybe we were being a little bit arrogant by assuming that we could do two movies. We said you know what, let's scale it down. Let's first make sure that it works for everyone."

After years of flirting with the sequel, it was confirmed that Independence Day star Will Smith will not return as Stephen Hiller. Jeff Goldblum revealed in an October interview that there is a role for him in the new screenplay, but his involvement has not been confirmed. While Dean Devlin didn't address Jeff Goldblum's involvement, the producer did confirm they had several meetings with Will Smith over the years.

"I'm not sure of the reasons why Will ultimately decided not to do it. You'd have to ask him. I think he was just at a place where he did seriously consider it. We had a lot of meetings with him, but at the end of the day he decided that doing this wasn't right for him."

During the interview, Dean Devlin commented on the new Stargate trilogy, which was announced back in May. Unfortunately for fans of that franchise, Dean Devlin revealed that the reboot is currently taking a backseat to the Independence Day sequel.

Unfortunately, we have to wait until we finish Independence Day for that. Roland wants to direct that one too. Hopefully we go into that right afterwards."

Dean Devlin went onto confirm that this new Stargate will be a reboot of the original movie that spawned TV shows such as Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Infinity, Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate Universe. When asked if Roland Emmerich will direct all three movies in the trilogy, Dean Devlin had this to say.

"Well, he'd like to direct the first one. I don't know if he wants to do all three but he definitely would like to do the first one."