20th Century Fox‘s upcoming film Alien: Covenant won’t arrive intheaters until next weekend, meaning we still have no idea how the film will be received by fans and critics or how it will perform at the box office. 2012’s Prometheus under-delivered ($403 million off a $130 million budget) and was met with mixed reaction. So despite all of the unknowns, director Ridley Scott is already boldly talking up a sequel.
Scott told IGN UK, “we’re writing [a sequel] now, as we speak. I’ll be filming that within 14 months.” He also gave gave an update on Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) now defunct Alien film, calling it Awakening, a title that Scott has used in reference to the possible upcoming films in the series.
Scott said, “They wanted to do Alien, er, Awakening – Neill Blomkamp. I said fine. I was going to be the producer. If I could have, I would have. Except I do question – why have both [Blomkamp’s Alien and Scott’s Alien] out there? It seems like shooting your big toe off – it doesn’t make sense.
“But they didn’t go forward with it, Fox, so I just kind of kept out of it. I mean, I’d literally ignited this thing to bring it off the ground again, because it was lying there dormant on a shelf. I had this thing to bring it back up – but here we are.”
In other words, Scott decided he wanted to do yet another Alien film and he didn’t want Blomkamp stealing any of his thunder so he told Fox to shut that s— down.
Scott returns to the universe he created with 1979’s Alien with Alien: Covenant. The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world. When they uncover a threat beyond their imagination, they must attempt a harrowing escape.
Alien: Covenant stars Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Amy Seimetz, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, and James Franco.
John Logan (Spectre) and Dante Harper penned the Alien: Covenant screenplay. Alien: Covenant will open in theaters on May 19.
