The Best Line In Independence Day Was Written To Save The Movie’s Title

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 14 seconds ago

The 1996 summer blockbuster Independence Day is full of iconic moments that absolutely thrilled audiences. This includes the sight of alien vessels blowing up the White House and thrilling dogfights between American fighter jets and smaller extraterrestrial ships. Arguably, though, the most iconic thing in the entire film is Bill Pullman’s rousing “Today, we celebrate our Independence Day” speech. Onscreen, his powerful words rallied the entire world together in defiance of an alien invasion; offscreen, those words cemented Independence Day as the most patriotic movie of the ‘90s. Long story short? It’s impossible to think of this movie without remembering this amazing line.

Because of this, you may be shocked to discover that the movie’s script did not originally have this legendary line. Instead, it was added at the last minute to convince 20th Century Fox that the movie should be named Independence Day; Warner Bros. owned the rights to this title, and Fox wanted to name the movie Doomsday in order to avoid paying a rival studio. Fortunately, two weeks after Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich snuck the line into the film’s dailies, Fox approved using the title Independence Day.

Sneaking In The Perfect Line

When Independence Day premiered in 1996, many fans thought it was the first film with this title. However, they were wrong: in 1984, Warner Bros. released a movie of the same name. That earlier film didn’t feature invading aliens. Instead, it focused on a small-town artist (played by Kathleen Quinlan) trying to make her dreams come true. It got mixed reviews, and very few people saw the movie because it was only available on VHS until 2015. However, its success (or lack thereof) didn’t matter. Because WB already had a movie with this title, 20th Century Fox wouldn’t be able to name their own blockbuster Independence Day without paying for the rights.  

As you might imagine, Fox didn’t want to pay if they didn’t have to. Therefore, they used ID4 as a working title during production; for the theatrical release, they wanted to name the movie Doomsday to match the disaster vibe of other ‘90s films. However, writer Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich really, really wanted to name this movie Independence Day, so they hatched a plan. He knew that Fox executives were regularly viewing dailies from the film to ensure that their money (it had a $75 million budget) was well spent. Because of this, he teamed up with Bill Pullman to secretly convince those execs of the need for a name change.

The original script for Independence Day did have the big Bill Pullman speech, which his character used to rally the nations of the world together against the alien threat. However, it didn’t have the iconic “Today, we celebrate our Independence Day” line. Devlin and Emmerich conspired with Pullman, pulling him aside to add this new line. Their goal was simple: they wanted the Fox executives watching the dailies to be so moved by the end of the speech that they approved naming the movie Independence Day. Incredibly, the strategy worked: two weeks after execs viewed the dailies, 20th Century Fox negotiated a deal with Warner Bros. for the rights to the name.

All of this adds a wonderfully meta dimension to the ‘90s biggest blockbuster film. In the context of Independence Day, the end of the speech is used to rally the world together in the name of a righteous cause. In the real world,  the end of the speech was used to rally studio executives into making the smartest name change in Hollywood history. It was a great call, really; like, can you imagine if this crowdpleasing movie had a name as generic as Doomsday? Fortunately, two men making a movie about out-of-this-world invaders were able to do the impossible and bring a bunch of stubborn studio executives back down to Earth.