Roland Emmerich is attempting to rebound after the failed, reportedly more personal film, Stonewall, and where else should one go to revitalize a career but back to one’s critical and box office triumphs. Emmerich will soon release Independence Day: Resurgence, the long-awaited follow-up to the patriotic battle royale with a bunch of aliens, which looks like a very similar battle royale with a bunch of other aliens. It was also revealed recently that a reboot of the original Stargate is on the docket for Dean Devlin, Emmerich’s regular producer, and in a new interview with Variety, Devlin talked about how the idea for the reboot came together. This is what he said about the idea of rebooting the story:

“At the time that we made it, every single studio in Hollywood had told me that science fiction was dead…And Roland and I really love science fiction, so I think that’s partly why it worked and resonated. It wasn’t a cynical attempt to try and make something that was crowd-pleasing.”

He went onto say that Stargate, which eventually spun off into some 354 episodes of TV, was originally meant to be a trilogy “and because of what happened with the rights and changes at the studio and all kinds of strange things, we never got to do parts two and three.” This would seemingly be fixed with this next round of Stargate films, which will be written by James A. Woods and Nicolas Wright, the same writing team that wrote Independence Day: Resurgence. Emmerich and Devlin with spearhead the production, with Emmerich still mum on whether or not he will officially be directing the film. Here’s what Devlin had to say about the direction of the reboot, and what it’s like to let someone else take over the concept that he helped originate:

“It’s not a story that can take place 20 years later. So the only way to really tell that trilogy is to go back from the beginning and start the story all over again…It was taken away from us, and it’s tough to have your children raised by other parents, even if they do a very good job. … For us, it’s not putting down what has been done. It’s to let us finish telling our story.”

Fair point. One would think that with 350 or so episodes of television and a still pretty strong two-hour movie under the banner of Stargate that the story would have been exhausted but Devlin clearly has an idea for something that hasn’t been seen in the world before. He’s got my support for now, but mind you, Independence Day: Resurgence is about to come out and its not screening for critics in many, many areas. We shall see.