Travolta Back to 'Battlefield'?

By Stephen M. Silverman

07/13/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

"Battlefield Earth 2"? Yes, says its embattled star, John Travolta, who took a lot of heat for starring in last summer's $70 million box office dud, "Battlefield Earth," which was based on a science fiction novel by the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Travolta is a Scientologist -- and a fan of his last movie's. "The bottom line is that I feel really good about it. Here I was taking big chances, breaking a new genre," Travolta, 46, told reporters at a news conference for his upcoming "Lucky Numbers." Asked whether or not there would be a "Battlefield 2," the star responded, "Sure. Yeah." Critics called "Battlefield" one of the worst movies of the year. PEOPLE's Leah Rozen found it "egregiously awful . . . so incoherent, so ugly and so pointless that you have to wonder why Warner Bros. is even bothering to distribute this embarrassment." On a happier note, yesterday, reports Variety, Travolta and his wife, actress Kelly Preston, contributed $25,000 to the strike relief fund to benefit out-of-work members of the Screen Actors Guild, affected by the current walkout against the advertising agency.