Roland Emmerich, known for his blockbuster movies about global disasters, such as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, has been discussing how the global pandemic affected the filming of his latest science fiction epic – Moonfall.
The movie features Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry and John Bradley who must join forces to take on the unruly celestial object. But the moon shifting out of its orbit and coming for Earth wasn’t the only challenge for Emmerich and his cast and crew. Covid protocols coming in and suddenly adding unexpected costs to the shoot were also something that had to be contended with.
Emmerich told comicbook.com; “I made it through the pandemic, which was naturally a problem for us because all of a sudden there was 5.6 million additional costs. So, we had to slim down the movie quite a bit. But, we never ever cut anything out of the script.”
“We had to shoot everything faster…it’s one of these things where you can shoot a movie faster and faster. That means I shot more or less the whole movie in 61 days. I had no second unit.”
He added, “These days, I’m just kind of doing it all myself, and I have fun doing it. Yeah. And then we even cut like three or four or five days out.”
As well as disaster movies, Emmerich has also made the Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren vehicle Universal Soldier, Stargate, and the 1998 version of Godzilla. There was also White House Down in 2013 which somehow doesn’t star Gerard Butler, but does star Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx.
Moonfall is set for release on February 4, 2022. While we wait, check out our guides to the best action movies and the best alien movies.