Moonfall Director Roland Emmerich Opens Up About Casting and Working During the Pandemic

Roland Emmerich is known for helming an array of sci-fi films including Stargate, Independence Day, and 2012. Emmerich's movies often focus on world-ending disasters and his latest is no exception. Moonfall hits theaters next month and sees Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, and John Bradley teaming up when a mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit. Back in November, ComicBook.com had the chance to visit Emmerich at Centropolis Entertainment while he was finishing up editing the film. During the chat, the director talked about making the movie during the pandemic without a second unit and casting the stars involved. 

"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," Emmerich explained. "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 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."

"No, we actually didn't write it for anybody," Emmerich revealed when asked about the cast. "I always had a secret flame on the back of my mind, Patrick Wilson. Then we kind of thought, 'Oh, it would be cool to have Halle Berry in the movie.' It was the first two. Then John Bradley. I just had a nice Zoom call with him. And from that moment on, he was my favorite." 

"And then it's pretty much, because we're doing these movies now since Midway, we do them as we are the studio. That means we go sell a movie in Cannes. Then put all the money together and whatever we can get and then more or less make the movie. This one was quite big. It was 138. That's a lot of money ... I like it like that, because we are the studio. Yes, we have American distribution. We have Chinese distribution. We have pretty much a worldwide distribution. We do it all ourselves. It's a little bit more work, but it makes sense."

Stay tuned for more from our interview with Roland Emmerich where he talks more about Moonfall, moon conspiracies, Marvel movies, and more.

Moonfall hits theaters on February 4th.