Director Roland Emmerich is gearing up to promote his latest film, the White House actioner White House Down, but it sounds like he plans on heading back to our nation’s most famous residence again sooner rather than later.  A sequel to Emmerich’s 1996 blockbuster Independence Day has been rumored for years, but the project finally gained some traction recently when Emmerich confirmed that he and producer Dean Devlin were poised to sit down and write two back-to-back follow-ups.  Emmerich has now offered a new update on ID Forever Part 1 and ID Forever Part 2 (let’s hope they change those titles…), providing some fairly intricate story details and revealing that Part 1 will take place 20 years after the events of the first film.  Hit the jump to read on.

Speaking with the folks at EW, Emmerich revealed that the sequel’s story is set into motion when a distress call sent back to the aliens’ home planet from the first film finally brings reinforcements back to Earth:

”The humans knew that one day the aliens would come back, and they know that the only way you can really travel in space is through wormholes. So for the aliens, it could take two or three weeks, but for us that’s 20 or 25 years.”

The filmmaker revealed that the sequels will be a mix of characters from the original film and newcomers, with the primary focus being on the latter:

While there may be some familiar faces in the sequels — Bill Pullman has already confirmed that he is onboard; Will Smith has not — their storylines will focus on a new generation of human heroes, including the stepson of Will Smith’s Independence Daycharacter (played in that film by Ross Bagley). “It’s still some of the same characters, but also new younger characters; it’s a little bit like the sons take over,” says Emmerich, who promises that the first sequel will have a cliffhanger ending to keep audiences coming back for more. “The first one ends on a little success, but only enough to give the humans hope. And then in the second one they free themselves again [from the aliens].”

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Image via 20th Century Fox

Emmerich said that he’s already started working with his art department to design the world of ID Forever, as Earth has been in possession of alien technology for two decades:

“It’s a changed world. It’s like parallel history. [Humans] have harnessed all this alien technology. We don’t know how to duplicate it because it’s organically-grown technology, but we know how to take an antigravity device and put it in a human airplane.”

Emmerich and Devlin have completed their drafts of ID Forever Part 1 and Part 2 and have handed them over to White House Down and The Amazing Spider-Man screenwriter James Vanderbilt for a rewrite.  It certainly sounds like things are moving full-speed ahead on the Independence Day sequels, and Emmerich certainly knows how to blow shit up real good so hopefully we see them come to fruition in the near future.  Someone tell Jeff Goldblum to pick up his phone.

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