“The Will Smith part of it may be ongoing, but I think there’s strategies for both [situations]," said Pullman during an interview with CraveOnline, revealing that director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin have a back-up plan should Smith decline the opportunity to return for the sequel. "I like what I have to do in both of them. I’m not in an old age home in a wheelchair being wheeled out for one more moment. It’s a very interesting conception of what happens to Whitmore between then and when it picks back up.”
Pullman - who is currently back in the White House as the star of the NBC sitcom 1600 Penn - goes on to say that Independence Day 2 could go into production "within a year", but he has his reservations: "Nobody’s holding their breath because it’s been continually plagued.”