“No, we don’t like Will Smith,” Roland Emmerich recalled the studio saying. “He’s unproven. He doesn’t work in international [markets].”
Dean Devlin remembered a racial component being a factor saying, “They said, ‘You cast a Black guy in this part, you’re going to kill foreign [box office].’
“Our argument was, ‘Well, the movie is about space aliens. It’s going to do fine foreign.’ It was a big war, and Roland really stood up for [Smith] — and we ultimately won that war.”
Emmerich ultimately issued an ultimatum: either move on with Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith in the lead roles or they would move the film to Universal Studios.