The Independence Day sequel idea that was ultimately scrapped!

The “Independence Day” sequel we see on screens next week won’t be the same one Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin started writing in the early 2000s.

The filmmaking duo behind the original 1996 blockbuster had originally summoned up a yarn that tied into the events of 911 – it was ultimately poo-pooed.

“It was after 9/11 and Dean and I wanted to make the movie about peace, and it just didn’t work,” Emmerich said in this month’s Empire Magazine. “There’s still an element of that in the new one, but that version was only about that. We shoot aliens down accidentally and then at the end of the movie they land on the White House lawn and say ‘we come in peace’ and that was it. It was just too weak an idea and we didn’t really want to do it. It didn’t have an Independence Day feel. Only the alien ship was destroyed!”

Emmerich also spoke about the sequel’s lengthy gestation period and why it’s taken so long for “Independence Day : Resurgence” to come to fruition.

“I’d never planned to make a sequel — I always felt that Independence Day was a standalone film,” he said. “But over the years I realized how iconic the film had become for people and I was repeatedly asked by [20th Century] Fox to do it. What really did it was just how amazing film technology is these days and how restricted I felt in ‘95/’96 when I did the original one. But it’s not a traditional sequel.”