Roland Emmerich on Midway, how Independence Day changed the film industry, and more

midway 2019 remake roland emmerich interview woody harrelson aaron eckhart
~ alexmoreland

[Film studios] all in a state of panic; with all the distractions of TV and video games and stuff, it becomes more and more difficult to lure people into the theatre. Actually, here in America, you have to spend enormous amounts of money, like thirty, forty, fifty million dollars to advertise the movie. That comes on top of escalating production costs. It becomes a real, real risky game. I understand they’re risk-averse, but I just always do what I want to do and try to get it done.

I interviewed Roland Emmerich of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla fame about his latest film Midway – a war movie charting the events after the attack on Pearl Harbour.

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Published by alexmoreland

6 thoughts on “Roland Emmerich on Midway, how Independence Day changed the film industry, and more”

  1. I remember my dad making me watch the original Henry Fonda/Charlton Heston movie. Can’t remember the movie itself, just that it’s one of the many military movies that dad insisted I, the son of a sailor, watch.

    It’s surprising that nowhere in the interview did they mention that it was a remake. Like, instead of asking “Why?”

    Every time I meet a young writer I’m asking, “what’s the movie that you really have to write?” He said without any hesitation, “Midway” – then I asked “Why?”

    he should have said “But there’s already a Midway movie.” I guess that hasn’t stopped Hollywood before, though. Maybe the word “remake” has such a negative stigma nowadays, the interviewer wasn’t allowed to question it? Idk, just speculating.

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    1. I found that puzzling as well. Not like the original Midway movie was obscure. He also did a shit job of it, imo. The dialogue was pretty bad, and the accents were atrocious. Good news is they sank Nick Jonas with an anchor.

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      1. Not like the original Midway movie was obscure.

        Exactly. I just looked it up on Wikipedia: “Midway proved extremely popular with movie audiences, earning over $43 million at the box office, becoming the tenth most popular movie of 1976. “

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    2. Maybe the word “remake” has such a negative stigma nowadays, the interviewer wasn’t allowed to question it? Idk, just speculating.

      Nothing that interesting, to be honest – I have very little editorial oversight when it comes to which questions to ask. Probably too little! Nah, but basically it was a ten-minute conversation, and Roland talks slowly; I’d been planning to press him a little more on that, but I was conscious of running out of time, basically. Hence why the question is the broader “why did you think this story was worth telling”, without the follow up “even though there have been other movies about Pearl Harbour/the Battle of Midway before”.

      That said, I don’t think it’s a remake of the earlier film? I mean, it’s about the same event, yeah, but they don’t seem to use the same script or anything like that, and as far as I can tell from Google it’s only one website that says it’s a remake. Though I suppose when it’s a film about the same historical event the lines start to blur a little bit!

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