Independence Day (film)

Independence Day (film)

Independence Day is a 1996 American military science fiction disaster film about an alien invasion of Earth. The narrative focuses on a disparate group of people who converge in the Nevada desert and, along with the rest of the human population, participate in a last-chance counterattack on July 4, the same date as the Independence Day holiday in the United States. It was directed by German director Roland Emmerich, who co-wrote the script with producer Dean Devlin.

While promoting Stargate in Europe, Emmerich came up with the idea for the film when fielding a question about his own belief in the existence of alien life. He and Devlin decided to incorporate a large-scale attack when noticing that aliens in most invasion films travel long distances in outer space only to remain hidden when reaching Earth. Principal photography for the film began in July 1995 in New York City, and the film was officially completed on June 20, 1996.

The film was scheduled for release on July 3, 1996, but due to the high level of anticipation for the movie, many theaters began showing it on the evening of July 2, 1996, the same day the film begins. The film's combined domestic and international box office gross is $816,969,268, which at one point was the second-highest worldwide gross of all-time. It is the 34th-highest-grossing movie of all time and was at the forefront of the large-scale disaster film and science fiction resurgences of the mid-to-late-1990s. It also won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.