Filmmaker Roland Emmerich recently gave EW an update on the proposed two-part “Independence Day” sequels.

Emmerich says the story picks up twenty years after the original, after the distress call sent by the first wave of aliens finally brings reinforcements to Earth.

Bill Pullman will return as former President Whitmore, but the main thrust will shift to the stepson of Will Smith’s Captain Steven Hiller character and several other younger leads.

“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.” “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 anti-gravity device and put it in a human airplane. The first sequel 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].”

Source: EW