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Movies with storylines about holidays are timely when they open, but tend to fade quickly when the celebrating ends. Sometimes, however, boxoffice lightning strikes — as it did 29 years ago when INDEPENDENCE DAY opened July 3, 1996.

ID’s storyline began July 2, 1996 with worldwide communications on Earth having been interrupted by atmospheric interference from an enormous unidentified object about to smash into our planet. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a gigantic alien spacecraft that on July 3 destroys major cities around the world. Survivors head for Nevada’s Area 51, where the U.S. military is thought to be hiding a captured spaceship, and fight for their freedom July 4 — making it their Independence Day.

Directed by Roland Emmerich & produced by Dean Devlin, producer of the  1994 sci-fi adventure STARGATE, ID’s stars include Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith & Bill Pullman. Initially, the U.S. military was to provide the filmmakers with personnel, uniforms & vehicles. But that cooperation evaporated when the producers refused to delete the screenplay’s use of Area 51, a sensitive issue for the military since the mid-’50s when stories first circulated about UFO sightings there.

ID, which was produced for about $75M, opened via 20th Century-Fox to $50.2M. It did $306.2M domestic and $511.2M international for a global total of $817.4M.

Its success sparked a resurgence of sci-fi disaster films, recalling 1950’s hits like THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, INVADERS FROM MARS & IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. But those classics aren’t what inspired Emmerich & Devlin to develop ID. They’ve said the idea came to them while in Europe promoting STARGATE, which was about a planet with  beings like our ancient Egyptians.

When a journalist asked why Emmerich, who didn’t believe in aliens, had made ID, he said he was intrigued by the idea of aliens arriving here. Soon he was imagining enormous spaceships hovering over Earth’s biggest cities.
They wrote ID while on a month’s vacation in Mexico, after which things started happening at warp speed. A day after sending it out, Fox’s then chairman, Peter Chernin, gave ID a green light. Three days later, in February 1995, pre-production began.

What drove ID to blockbuster success was Fox’s innovative marketing campaign, which kicked off in January 1996 with the first ever Super Bowl movie ad — on Game XXX for $1.3M, a hefty price at the time. Studios weren’t spending then to promote films six months before they hit theatres.

Using co$tly Super Bowl spots to create awareness of a movie was brand new. A year later, Super Bowl ads were part of every event film’s marketing playbook. That’s still the case today, although ad prices have soared — with a :30 spot in 2025’s Super Bowl LIX having reportedly cost about $8M.