Roland Emmerich Says His Most Underrated Sci-Fi Movie Will “Never” Get a Sequel

Roland Emmerich knows how to make epic science fiction. The director behind Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow might not have a perfect track record, but even his less successful movies are still star-studded blockbuster spectacles with original stories — exactly the kind of thing we all wish Hollywood would do more of right now. So it comes as a disappointment to hear that one of his most ambitious (and most underrated) sci-fi movies won’t be getting a sequel despite the fact that it ended on a wild cliffhanger clearly designed to launch a new franchise.

That movie is 2022’s Moonfall, and while speaking to Emmerich at San Diego Comic Con, where he’s currently promoting his new Peacock show, we couldn’t resist asking about the fate of Moonfall 2.

So will there be a sequel?

“Probably never,” Emmerich tells Inverse with a chuckle.

When asked in a follow-up question if he wanted to make Moonfall 2, the director admits he considered it, before adding that it ultimately didn’t work out.

“Yes, I had actually an idea for it,” Emmerich says, “but it’s probably not gonna work.”

The plot of Moonfall revolves around a scenario in which the Moon literally starts plummeting towards the Earth, throwing our planet into chaos and near-certain annihilation. A team of scientists that includes Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, and John Bradley races to come up with a solution only to learn that (spoiler alert) our Moon is actually a massive alien ship created by a dying species in a last ditch effort to escape from a rogue AI (or something like that, it’s been a few years since I watched it). Ultimately, the heroes succeed and John Bradley finds himself face to face with the aliens, setting up a sequel that we’ll sadly never see.

While Emmerich seems to have a policy against sequels in general, he made a notable exception for Moonfall, which was a passion project that he largely self-funded. Before the film’s release, the director told The Hollywood Reporter that he had plans for a trilogy — assuming the first one was a success.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Moonfall made less than $60 million at the box office on a budget of $140 million. It was also a critical flop and currently has a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes. Between the money and the reviews, whatever plans Emmerich had have clearly fizzled out. The fact that we now know he had an “idea” for a sequel only makes it that much more painful for the true Moonfall heads among us.