Roland Emmerich directing low-budget alien invasion movie

If there's one thing that Roland Emmerich is good at, it's blowing things up on a grand scale.

As a director, he has always erred on the side of vastness. Some of his large scale filmic feats have included: blowing up the White House ( Independence Day ), freezing New York ( The Day After Tomorrow ), and ending the world ( 2012 ).

With Shakespearean thriller Anonymous currently in post production, The Hollywood Reporter has news that Emmerich is scaling down for Zone .

The under-the-radar production is apparently a found-footage thriller in the vein of Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity , and will see Emmerich working with a budget of $5 million (a tiny fraction of what he's used to).

There's rumours that a couple of unknowns have been cast, and that the alien invasion movie will be largely improv-based.

Emmerich's films have always been impressive in terms of spectacle, but disappointing on a character level: will these restrictive working conditions force him to up the ante in terms of story and performance?

Or is it a cynical cash-in based on the profit-to-budget ratios of recent hits like Cloverfield , Paranormal Activity and Gareth Edwards' Monsters ?

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Up for another alien invasion flick or fed up with found-footage? Rant below!