11/13/2015

'Alien: Paradise Lost' Has a New Title; Ridley Scott wants Control of Franchise


Ridley Scott knows what he wants from the Alien franchise now that he's return to it after a lenghty hiatus. Prometheus was just the beginning, and Scott's plan doesn't include whatever Neill Blomkamp was hoping to do with his Alien sequel, which is why that project is on the shelf now. If there was any doubt that Scott isn't going to let the franchise spin out of control again, just check out what he told IGN...

"I’m trying to keep this for myself. I let the other one ['Alien'] get away from me – I shouldn’t have… I’m trying to re-resurrect the beast and let if off the hook for a while because I’m coming back into the back-end of 'Alien 1.' I’m gradually getting to 'Alien 1,'. 

Basically he doesn't want to see his beloved franchise devolve into Alien: Resurrection or Alien vs. Predator flicks.  While he doesn't say it outright, Scott is also kind of lumping Blomkamp's work with those movies which nobody likes to acknowledge exist. On the plus side it's good to see that Scott is passionate about Alien and wants to make sure it thrives. Fans might argue that Prometheus was hardly the best way to go about it, though.

Speaking of which, Scott had previously stated the next film would be titled Alien: Paradise Lost, and would be part of the inevitable connection to the original Alien film. But somewhere along the way that title has changed, and he casually revealed last night at the AFI Film Festival [via ThePlaylist] that the new title is Alien: Covenant. He mentioned the change while discussing his work on The Martian, but failed to reveal if the new title was done for any specific storyline reason.

The newly-titled Alien: Covenant opens March 30th 2017.