SDCC EXCLUSIVE: Director Roland Emmerich Dishes on New Series, ‘Those About to Die’

BB and other members of the press got the chance to sit down with Director Roland Emmerich to talk his new series, Those About to Die, at San Diego Comic-Con. During our chat, Emmerich talked bringing the show to life, a potential Season 2, another Independence Day movie, and so much more. Check out what he had to say below.

On if there are plans for a Season 2: “Well, it’s supposed to be a trilogy and we’ll see if it’s successful or no. It’s right now in… I only know numbers from Prime, Amazon Prime and International and it’s on 31 countries, number one. Which is like a good sign. I haven’t gotten yet the numbers for America.”

On his inspiration for creating this show: “My fascination with Rome. I kind of think it’s incredible, was an incredible city. Had one million inhabitants, around 300,000 were slaves. And actually out of these slaves there were kind of some stars because they were good at what they were doing in riding a chariot, or being a great gladiator. And that like tell us, a little bit, when you compare it to today, same thing. Only they’re not slaves anymore and nobody can die. But it’s very, very similar.”

On what his biggest challenge was in keeping with some historical accuracy, but at the same time creating his own universe as well: “Look, it’s like this, who was there to record anything? And then every historian was hired by another emperor to kind of trash the emperors before them. And I studied Vespasian very well. I also found it very interesting that he was a normal guy. He was not a quid, not a patrician. So he pretty much was made emperor after the last Julian emperor, Nero, killed himself. And so there was a year of the four emperors and he was just super smart and reigned for like 11, 12 years.

And he did something very, very super smart. He realized that in a way that the circus maximus was not very good for gladiator fights. So what he did, he kind of builds on the place like Nero had stolen from him after the big fire, and said, ‘I erase Nero’s Golden House and built a public arena for the Roman people,’ which still stands today as the thing. And that changed everything. You know what I mean? That changed really how they’re fighting, how close you could be, how everything is so close”.

On why this show is being called a trilogy: “Because it has kind something to do with Tenax. Tenax will find out that he has a certain name and all of a sudden the chance that he becomes emperor is quite big. And I want to show him at the very end of season three as an emperor. He’s the ultimate climber. You know what I mean? Because also for him, it’s inspiring that muleteers, a guy from the background of muleteers, mule beaters, could become Emperor and Vespasian was that. And he kind of said, ‘Why not me? Why not me? I’m a super smart guy. I can run things.'”

On how technology made it a good time to finally make this series: “It always has to do with technology. It was a good time to do it because there’s a volume stage where you can… I shot 108 days on the volume stage. And that’s like, it tells you everything. And that was that. And CGI became quite good. We also bought an Unreal Engine model, which was done for a museum in Germany and they worked for 10 years on this thing, and modeled it and did all these kind of things. So we had something great to fall back to, and it’s why the show looks so big.”

On a potentially another Independence Day movie: “No. They sold it now to Disney and I have to probably kind of talk to somebody at Disney. I have a story and everything, trust me.”

On if he liked that the series was released in its entirety and not on a weekly basis: “No, no, no. I like that it’s all released at once because people can still watch it once in a while, but I always hope that they binge it in two, three days.”

Those About to Die is now streaming on Peacock!

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity