Saturday, Jun 04, 2016

Actors Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum and director Roland Emmerich stopped by Dubai on Saturday afternoon as part of their Independence Day: Resurgence press tour.

The film kicks off 20 years after the events of the award-winning 1996 Will Smith flick. Before the aliens of Independence Day were defeated, they sent a distress call to other battalions, who two decades later send a much more powerful gravitational weapon to Earth, threatening the human race and destroying major landmarks around the world — including the Burj Khalifa.

“People have been asking me about the Burj Khalifa, but I can assure everybody that it’s still there — I slept there last night. It was very nice,” joked Emmerich.

“Went to the top and looked down, and I’m really afraid of heights so it was a really courageous thing of me to do.”

The crew didn’t film in Dubai, using computer generated images instead.

Emmerich said it wasn’t his initial intention to turn Independence Day into a franchise, but now that they’ve made part two, there’s room for more.

“Over the years, I realised how seminal and important that [first] film was,” he said.

Hemsworth, who plays Jake Morrison, a pilot whose parents were killed in the first attack, said he was inspired by Will Smith punching aliens back in the day (Smith’s character has now been killed off).

“Liam Hemsworth is more than fantastic,” Goldblum, returning as David Levinson, said. “What word can use to describe Liam Hemsworth? Fantastic.”

Speaking about his experience filming Resurgence, he added, “I loved it to pieces.”

The cast, who had flown in from Australia, are headed to London next.

Independence Day: Resurgence is scheduled to release in the UAE on July 7.

Marwa Hamad, Staff Reporter

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