We’ve all been extremely interested in what direction the Alien franchise could be getting in the wake of the Disney merger with 21st Century Studios, as it had been confirmed by Ridley Scott himself that he was speaking with studio executives about making a third movie that had once been referred to by the title Alien: Awakening. 

While promoting his upcoming science fiction series Raised By Wolves, Ridley Scott has confirmed to Forbes that there is still active development on a third untitled Alien film and potentially gives insight on a new direction for the film, rather than continuing his string of prequels trying to make a new path via Michael Fassbender’s David.  

Scott doesn’t come out and say this third movie will be a new take, he alludes that it might not be similar or connected to Prometheus and Covenant.

Here is that quick blurb from his interview with Forbes. 

SCOTT: “That’s in process. We went down a route to try and reinvent the wheel with Prometheus and Covenant. Whether or not we go directly back to that is doubtful because Prometheus woke it up very well. But you know, you’re asking fundamental questions like, ‘Has the Alien himself, the facehugger, the chestburster, have they all run out of steam? Do you have to rethink the whole bloody thing and simply use the word to franchise?’ That’s always the fundamental question.”

Some of the ideas for Alien: Awakening were to fill gaps between the events of the last two films or directly seeing David getting his hands on Covenant’s colony of human settlers for future xenomorph experiments leading into the original Alien from 1979 explaining how the derelict ship got on LV-426. However, a lot of fans are not really in favor of Scott misidentifying that element of the original movie.

Another idea for the film was that surviving Engineers from other planets seeking out David to avenge his mass murder on Paradise.

I was a massive fan of all the Engineer and bio-weapon stuff from Prometheus but when Alien: Covenant abandoned all that to become a generic sci-fi slasher it sort of left a bad taste in my mouth. Such wasted potential after Scott spent all that time focusing on the Engineers being such important figures in the Alien universe/mythology only to have David commit genocide against them.

There had been a huge fan response to Neill Blomkamp’s purposed Alien 5 and the return of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, the normally coy actress had already been convinced by a pitch from Neill and was on board even before the studio agreed to allow him to develop it formally. 

Alien 5 was expected to negate the events of Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, making it a direct sequel to James Cameron’s beloved Aliens with characters such as Newt, Hicks, and Bishop expected to make a return. Cameron seemingly was a fan of the film’s script calling it “gangbusters” during the Aliens 30th Anniversary panel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2016. 

Jim’s comments contradicted statements made by Ridley that a script didn’t exist. 

The idea had been that while Ripley would have been the main hero of the film, Newt (most likely recast with a new actress) would have taken over the mantle in a hypothetical Alien 6 movie as previously outlined by Neill Blomkamp when he was explaining his vision for his film and how it could revitalize the franchise. 

However, there seemed to be a bit of a power struggle behind the scenes between Ridley Scott’s desire to get Alien: Covenant made and fandom’s overwhelming support to see Sigourney return to the Alien franchise with Blomkamp’s film. The two projects may have been in direct competition and Ridley was in a position of power as a producer on Alien 5 to have 20th Century greenlight his sequel instead. 

Scott was so hellbent on getting Alien: Covenant made he handed the reigns of Blade Runner 2049 over to Denis Villeneuve and stepped down as that project’s director. 

Blomkamp has since moved on to other projects and doesn’t seem very keen on the idea of returning to Alien 5 anytime soon.

This year a new treatment for Alien 5 was making news after franchise screenwriter Walter Hill revealed that he and his partner David Giler tackled a script dated March 2020 that may or may not feed into Blomkamp’s idea of removing Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection from franchise canon, teasing those events may have been a dream.

Scott himself is a busy bee as he has to finish filming his period thriller The Last Duel and is planning on shooting his drama Gucci sometime in the next year or so. At one point, Ridley was attached to direct a Merlin prequel film for Disney but for whatever reason pivoted to other projects instead. 

Raised By Wolves debuts today on HBO Max. 

RAISED BY WOLVES – The ambitious new sci-fi series centers on two androids tasked with raising human children on a mysterious virgin planet. As the burgeoning colony of humans threatens to be torn apart by religious differences, the androids learn that controlling the beliefs of humans is a treacherous and difficult task. 

SOURCE: FORBES