When 20th Century Fox announced that there would be a sequel to 1996's Independence Day, the first question on everyone's mind was, "Is Will Smith coming back?" On Thursday, ComicBook.com had the chance to speak with Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day: Resurgence, about why Smith didn't return to the project. Even I needed kind of like two years to get through two scripts. We sent him the scripts just when he was doing After Earth and wanted to create his own trilogy and had just done Men in Black 3 which was not a good experience for him.