While CG-filled blockbusters are now released nearly every weekend during the summer, that wasn’t the case back in 1996. Director Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi pic Independence Day brought destruction to movie screens on a massive scale that audiences hadn't seen much of before, complete with jaw-dropping visuals, creepy aliens, and of course Jeff Goldblum. Emmerich has been talking about making a sequel for years, but last year Independence Day 2 finally coalesced and production is currently underway in New Mexico.

The follow-up is one of a number of films that will be pushed next week at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, and we were able to get our hands on an information sheet for Fox’s slate of films, which includes a synopsis for Independence Day 2. While this may not be the official, final synopsis for the film, it does provide a nice overview of what fans can expect:

After Independence Day redefined the event movie genre, the next epic chapter delivers global catastrophe on an unimaginable scale. Using recovered alien technology, the nations of Earth have collaborated on an immense defense program to protect the planet. But nothing can prepare us for the aliens’ advanced and unprecedented force. Only the ingenuity of a few brave men and women can bring our world back from the brink of extinction.

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Image via 20th Century Fox

Emmerich actually went into much more detail about the story a few years ago when he and producer Dean Devlin were putting together the stories for not one but two Independence Day sequels. He said at that time that Independence Day 2 would take place 20 years after the events of the first movie, but the time difference may not be the same for the aliens that retreated:

”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.”

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Image via 20th Century Fox

Emmerich also spoke at that time about how the humans had put the left-behind alien technology to use while the aliens were away:

“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.”

While the filmmaker said all of this in 2013, many script revisions ago, that last bit seems to connect to the synopsis’ description of humans collaborating on a defense program built with the help of the alien tech.


All will be revealed when the movie opens in theaters on June 24, 2016. Independence Day 2 stars Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Liam Hemsworth, Maika Monroe, Jessie Usher, Joey King, Sela Ward, Brent Spiner, Vivica A. Fox, William Fichtner, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Judd Hirsch. Click here to catch up on all of our ID42 coverage thus far.

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Image via 20th Century Fox