After decades of advocating for serious change in our society by destroying most of it, director Roland Emmerich’s next film will take on the subject of gay rights—or as Pat Robertson would call it, “another disaster movie.” Emmerich has cast War Horse star Jeremy Irvine in Stonewall, a dramatic retelling of the 1969 raid on the Greenwich Village bar where gays and transgenders gathered, and the subsequent riots that became, as Deadline puts it, “the flashpoint for the gay rights movement.” No doubt irresistibly attracted by the word “flashpoint,” Emmerich will tackle Stonewall before his sequels to Independence Day (the flashpoint for the punching-aliens-in-the-face-movement).
Of course, Emmerich has only rarely tackled dramas that don’t involve copious fireballs—such as Anonymous, where the few bombshells had to do with Shakespeare’s secret identity, plus lots of cannons. Meanwhile, his history with gay characters is mostly limited to Independence Day’s Harvey Fierstein, despite Emmerich being openly gay himself. Nevertheless, Stonewall is described as his “passion project.” After all, Emmerich believes that what goes on between consenting adults behind closed doors is their business, until those doors are blown off in a massive explosion.