It's movies like "Independence Day" which help define the term "blockbuster." Audiences are fickle, sure, but every now and again something like that movie hits the jackpot, and when that happens you can almost guarantee a series will follow and probably succeed (see also: "The Matrix," "Men in Black," "Die Hard" and — next up — "Avatar"). What's surprising is that it's taken the better part of two decades for director Roland Emmerich to roll out his plans for an "Independence Day" sequel ... make that sequels, plural, because there'll be two of 'em.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about "ID" and his new Washington D.C.-centric flick "White House Down" (the trailer for which was just launched last night), Emmerich explained that the follow-up will take place in real time - that is, about twenty years after the events of the first — and will center on the stepson of Will Smith's character and others of his generation as they deal with a second wave of alien invasions.

Evidently, even though the aliens were gobsmacked by the ingenue of Smith's Captain Steven Hiller and his geeky sidekick (Jeff Goldblum's David Levinson), the creatures had enough time to send off some sort of distress call for reinforcements, and those suckers'll be more than ready for some new Fourth of July-style fireworks.

"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," Emmerich explained.

So, how have the people prepared for such a resurgence?

"It's a changed world," Emmerich teased. "It's like parallel history. [Humans] have harnessed all this alien technology [but] 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 presumably former President Thomas J. Whitmore will return as Bill Pullman signed on for "ID 2" and "ID 3," Mr.  I Needed To Be The Lead Will Smith hasn't just yet.

Also, Emmerich shared a major spoiler about why there'll be two sequels instead of just one.

"The first one," he said, "ends on a little success, but only enough to give the humans hope. And then in the second one they free themselves again ... We've rebuilt, but they also do different things."