While Ridley Scott's Prometheus felt very loosely connected to the Alien franchise, he's insisted that the upcoming films would eventually lead right up to his seminal 1979 sci-fi film. This was pretty much confirmed by the title of the next film, Alien: Covenant, and the recently released synopsis:
"Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition."
With pre-production kicking off in Sydney, Australia, Scott offered up more details on the sequels, which are actually Alien prequels, and revealed that there are two more films after Alien: Covenant, making for a total of four. He also revealed that Noomi Rapace's character, Elisabeth Shaw, who has been mentioned very little lately, will only be in the film briefly.
“Its a very complex story. Its an evolution of what I first did with Prometheus 1...Prometheus 1 was borne out of my frustration that on Alien 1 in 1979 – I only did one as I don’t normally do sequels. I was amazed that in the 3 that followed that no-one asked the question ‘why the Alien, who made it and why?’ Very basic questions. So I came up with the notion of Prometheus 1, which starts to indicate who might have made it and where it came from.”
He continued...
"So I’m now going to the next one, which is the next evolution directly connected with the first one, which was this Shaw, when [s]he replaced Michael Fassbender in two pieces and we’ll kind of pick it up there and it will evolve. When that’s finished there’ll be another one and then another one which will gradually drive into the back entrance of the film in 1979,” the British director revealed. So in other words, why was this space jockey there and why did he have an Alien inside him? And those questions will be answered."
With plans this ambitious it's no surprise Scott put a halt to Neill Blomkamp's project as it just would have made things more confusing. But with this many films over the next few years chances are we'll never see what Blomkamp had planned.
Alien: Covenant is scheduled to open on October 6th 2017. [THR]
