With credits that include Independence Day, Godzilla, 2012, and The Day After Tomorrow, director Roland Emmerich has cemented himself as the modern master of the disaster movie. His next film, Moonfall, sees him return to his trademark destructive territory. This time, Earth is threatened by total annihilation after the moon is mysteriously disrupted from its orbit. Emmerich helms a star-studded cast that included Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry, and others.
Screen Rant had an opportunity to talk with Emmerich about what separates Moonfall from his other disaster movies, the potential for sequels, and much more.
Screen Rant: I'm just so happy because I love a Roland Emmerich disaster movie. They are just my comfort food. How was Moonfall different, would you say, from any other disaster movie you've done before?
Roland Emmerich: I think it takes more time in space, and then inside the moon. That was, for me, quite different. Because after 2012, I asked myself, "What else could I do?" I kind of said no more disaster movies. Then I read this book called Who Built the Moon? and that inspired me to come up with this crazy tale.
I love that. In my head, you just walk around and think of all the ways that the Earth could be destroyed.
Roland Emmerich: Well, it's hard to actually find different scenarios. But I also like that it has this twist that the moon is not real; the moon is built. I think that makes it work.
I go into it thinking, "What if the moon falls to Earth and we've got to blow it up?" But it gets so much more complex than that, which makes me wonder if you're thinking about a larger universe. Do you have multiple films mapped out here? Because there was talk of a sequel.
Roland Emmerich: I mean, if the movie is successful, we'll do a sequel or two sequels. It was always imagined as a trilogy.
I love 2012, and there's that iconic tsunami shot that just seems so epic and such a big feat. For Moonfall, what was the biggest hurdle for you that you really wanted to get right?
Roland Emmerich: It was kind of the anomaly. We call it an anomaly, but it's a swarm. It's a nano swarm. That was super hard because we had two companies working on it.
Just to combine their forces and the look, it was very complicated. Because when you made too much of a swarm, it was not working. And it was too much like, with arms and stuff, an animal. It had to be developed in a very, very clever way.
I know you said that before Moonfall, you thought you were going to be done with disaster movies. As a fan of yours. I say keep doing them. I love them. Do you have any disaster movies in your mind that have not come to fruition for whatever reason?
Roland Emmerich: No, not really. Because it has to be something really new and exciting, and I have no other [ideas].
I would love to actually make another movie about climate change, but that has to be more in the future: how the horror scenario gets when 500 or 600 million people want to come to Europe or so. Everybody in Africa, in the Far East, cannot live off their land anymore and will all want to go to the North.
