Karl Stefanovic Has Been Cast In The New ‘Independence Day’ Sequel. Seriously.
The world is a strange and beautiful place.
The original Independence Day wasn’t exactly a serious film. Clocking in at a cool 150 minutes, the main takeaways were that explosions are cool, Will Smith is devoted to the art of the one-liner and Jeff Goldblum was contractually obliged to play sexy scientists throughout all the ’80s and ’90s. Also: if you’re ever in the midst of a global invasion of alien lifeforms much stronger and intellectually superior than yourself, you should probably just punch ’em in the face.
All this is now being taken to a new level for the upcoming sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence. First of all: it’s a sequel that happens in the same universe as the original, so we really just have to accept the premise that the entire plot is just happening again. Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman and other members of the old cast are back on board and it’s sure to be full of cringeworthy callbacks. 20 years after the original, it also runs the risk of looking like a parody of itself and/or Mars Attacks.
But for Australian viewers, there’s going to be one other thing slightly upping the absurdity of this whole ridiculous reboot: Karl motherfucking Stefanovic is on board. The Today host announced live on air this morning that he was lucky enough to take a break in his busy schedule of fighting sexism and enthusiastically slathering fistfuls of Vegemite into his mouth recently to fly to New Mexico and score a part in this major blockbuster. Somehow, he wasn’t joking.
“I went onto the set and there was this blue screen thing happening and then [cast and crew] all sat down and said ‘Righto, there’s going to be a speaking part given to one of you press people’,” he said. “It may not be long, it may not be very involved, and it may be awful [but] I play myself, which is very complex. Getting to the bottom of my own personality is not easy.”
Sure, it’s going to be a fleeting appearance. No, he wasn’t picked on merit. But holy shit, Karl is just having a stellar run at this whole life thing. He gets paid cold hard cash to eat pies and make dad jokes, he still takes every opportunity to challenge the nation’s political leaders on important issues, and he just fell into one of the biggest films of the next year.
Just another chapter in the saga of Karl: The Legend; The Man; The Enigma.
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Independence Day: Resurgence doesn’t have an official release date, but it’ll be out sometime in 2016.