People remember 2 things from the first one - the White House blowing up and Bill Pullman's speech.

And no Marvel doesn't pay their stars that much. In fact they are paid very low salaries, bar RDJ. No point in paying Will Smith so much when he's not a draw anymore. In fact he being in would have been the contrary.

Scarlett Johanson got $20 million for playing Black Widow in Ultron, whilst Robert got $40 mil. So I wouldn't say Scarlett got paid peanuts...
With that said the rest of the big cast got paid like about 5 million each.

Without Robert though... The entire franchise would not be what it is today, that's for sure, hence there is a return of investment.

He also had other projects he was working on that would have conflicted with their filming schedule. (Suicide Squad).

What they did was write his character off in the films story, so it's not like his character just popped out of existence.

He may not have the star power he once had, but he'd be the biggest star in the movie. Plus the 50mil was for two films, right? It's not unheard of.

Terminator: Genysis finding any sort of success anywhere is a travesty! It made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen look like the a masterpiece!

Speak for yourself. I remember two things from that film: Will Smith, and...the Whitehouse blowing up. Haven't watched it since I was a kid. Most people I've talked to rememeber that as being the first time they saw Will Smith in a big role. IMO, without him, the nostalgia factor is gone, and therefore most of my excitement.

I was wrong about Marvel, though. I was thinking Scarlet and Chris made 30m per film -- I was way off. Of course RDJ makes a lot more, but his situation is kinda special. Disney did pay Johnny Depp a metric shit-ton for his role in the Pirates films. I should've used that for comparison.

Still a far cry from the $50M that Will Smith was asking for and ScarJo is a bigger star than Smith as well now.

Considering that Will smith had one of the major roles in the independence day but he wasn't the central character that tied everything together in the movie, he asked for way too much money to be in a sequel(s). 

Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum played more important characters to be honest. They also wouldn't be greedy in what they wanted for sequels.

Some of the most memorable moments from independence day for me was the pro-alien people standing on the roofs of those buildings getting blasted away, the scene where the alien was talking through the scientist, will smith rolling up to area 51 with the alien in the truck, when Jeff called his wife while she was in the white house and bill's speech. 

I probably would've signed Will Smith for the movies and scaled back some of the CGI budget and marketing.

He would've added $50-$100+ million in the film's international gross fairly easily and increased home video sales by probably the same amount.

In the end as the studio you end up walking out with more money in your pocket. 

Lol. I think it will do just fine. Do you remember Independence Day? The movie was HUGE when it came out. Plus Jeff Goldblum was everyone's favorite character, and he IS back, so that's another draw. $200 million really isn't that much nowadays. I'm sure it will have NO problems making it back.

I heard the movie was not very good.

375 isn't that high of a bar to reach. 

Even BvS despite all the flak it takes likely is going to net Warner Bros. a pretty large profit. 

Also the assumption that movie studios only get 50% of a movie ticket isn't even that accurate, in the US, they really take home more like 60-70% of the ticket split, that's why movie theaters have to charge so much for popcorn and drinks. 

Maybe, but I think not having Will Smith will make the movie better. He was fine in the first one, but nothing special. Plus he has so much baggage now it’s hard to enjoy him. With his kid, his church and his hateful wife.

I saw it as a retelling of the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. Where it reflects social attitudes at the time. The embracing of the aliens vs how they reacted in the other movie. Distrust of the government - yet relies on it when needed. Growing acceptance of gay people (it was still illegal to be gay and serve in the US military and costing the USA million of dollars to throw gay people out of the military.)  I could go on and on.

Plus, a beautiful disaster epic. Follow with a resounding adaption and resurgence of the human life form.
It all depends on how good it is or isn’t. The first one was great.