Bill Pullman helped 'Independence Day' get its title.

Bill Pullman

Bill Pullman

The 66-year-old actor played President Whitmore in the 1996 sci-fi movie and revealed that it was supposed to be called 'Doomsday', before Whitmore's iconic speech in the film inspired the name change.

Bill told CinemaBlend of the famous scene: "We shot that at night, of course, because it's dark and not on a sound stage or anything.

"It was really late, and it got moved into the schedule early, because (producer) Dean Devlin and (director) Roland Emmerich were in contention right then with Fox about the title.

"I think it was gonna be 'Doomsday'. It's what Fox wanted, and it was a title that was typical of the time (for a) disaster movie."

The 'Sleepless in Seattle' star added that he felt under pressure to perform when making the speech, as Dean and Roland wanted the flick to be called 'Independence Day'.

Bill explained: "They really wanted 'Independence Day', so we had to make the speech really good.

"And then they cut it together, and a couple of nights later, Dean come to my trailer, and he said, 'Do you wanna see it?'

"So he popped in the VHS, he showed me the cut of the speech, and I went 'Holy Mother, they have got to name this movie 'Independence Day'.' And they did."

The movie spawned a sequel, 'Independence Day: Resurgence' - which was released two decades after the original - but Emmerich admits that he regretted doing the movie after Will Smith pulled out of playing Captain Steven Hiller in order to take on the part of Deadshot in 'Suicide Squad'.

The 64-year-old director said: "I just wanted to make a movie exactly like the first but then in the middle of production Will opted out because he wanted to do 'Suicide Squad'.

"I should have stopped making the movie because we had a much better script, then I had to really fast, cobble another script together.

"I should have just said no because all of a sudden I was making something I criticised myself: a sequel."

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