We know that next year's Jurassic World won't be a "hard reboot" of the Jurassic Park movie franchise, but at the same time it will feature a completely-different cast of human characters (even while maintaining story continuity with its predecessors). Hence, it's long been a given that Jeff Goldblum won't be reprising his beloved role as Dr. Ian Malcolm (the chaotician with "a deplorable excesses of personality," as JP founder John Hammond put it).

Independence Day 2 - another new installment in a sci-fi blockbuster franchise born in the 1990s costarring Goldblum - is also in development, but director Roland Emmerich has long maintained that he does intend to bring back the actor's character from the original film (i.e. over-educated cable repairman David Levinson).

Goldblum has kept a relatively low-profile in recent years, though he costars in two upcoming noteworthy comical caper features: Mortdecai, headlined by Johnny Depp and directed by David Koepp (co-writer on Jurassic Park) and next month's release The Grand Budapest Hotel, from writer/director Wes Anderson (whom Goldblum previously collaborated with on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). He was doing presswork for Anderson's latest whimsical joint, when The Huffington Post asked him about the next Jurassic Park film.

The actor told HuffPo that, as far as he knows, Dr. Malcolm won't be part of the Jurassic World story for the same reason that he wasn't in Jurassic Park III ("Nobody asked me."), though he was more forthcoming about Independence Day 2 once the interviewer mentioned that Emmerich had already talked about bringing Goldblum's ID4 character back for the sequel:

"Oh, good, so [Roland's] talked about it. Yeah, they've talked to me about it and I've talked to them about it and they're excited and I'm anxious and eager to see -- I haven't read anything -- what they cook up. You know, I think they're trying to put it together."

20th Century Fox originally scheduled Independence Day 2 to arrive in July 2015, though it wasn't too long thereafter that Emmerich cautioned that the project was moving along at a slower pace - one that pointed to a 2016 release, instead. Sure enough, the sequel has since moved back a year to 2016 - coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the original film - which helps to explain why Goldblum has yet to be officially locked down (much less, read the script).

Jeff Goldblum talks Independence Day 2

Emmerich previously revealed that the Independence Day sequel - which he co-wrote alongside Dean Devlin (Stargate, Independence Day) before James Vanderbilt (White House Down) provided revisions - will take place in an alternate modern-day setting, where humanity has spent the last twenty years harnessing the technology of the alien invaders from ID4. Events are set in motion when the next wave of the extraterrestrial conquers' attack is launched, with the arrival of the remainder of the alien fleet - which has spent the last two decades traveling to Earth via wormhole (or some sci-fi explanation to that effect).

Bill Pullman is also expected to appear in the Independence Day sequel (as the now ex-U.S. president), while it seems that Will Smith has finally decided to take a pass on reprising as hotshot pilot Steven Hiller, after going back and forth on the issue for some time. However, Emmerich has also indicated that half the cast (maybe more) will be composed of brand-new characters, in part to setup for a third installment - one which will only be made if ID4-2 is a proper box office success, though.

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Independence Day 2 is scheduled to open in U.S. theaters on July 1st, 2016.

Source: The Huffington Post