Proposed film, Alien: Awakening, the direct follow-up to 2017’s Alien: Covenant and 2012’s Prometheus, is reportedly being scripted as we speak and Ridley Scott is coming back to direct what will be the third Alien prequel. This news comes as 20th Century Fox celebrates the franchise’s 40th anniversary and the release of Alien in 1979.
There were two big exposes features interviews with Ridley Scott as he looked back at his seminal sci-fi horror classic Alien. The first we saw was from earlier in the week, where Ridley Scott confirmed Disney is currently discussing more Alien movies, though it wasn’t quite clear what they would be. At the time, Ridley Scott said this.
“You get to the point when you say, ‘Okay, it’s dead in the water.’ I think Alien vs. Predator was a daft idea. And I’m not sure it did very well or not, I don’t know. But it somehow brought down the beast. And I said to them, ‘Listen, you can resurrect this, but we have to go back to scratch and go to a prequel, if you like.’ So we go to Prometheus, which was not bad actually. But you know, there’s no alien in it, except the baby at the end that showed, itself, the possibility. I mean, it had the silhouette of an alien, right? The alien [origin concept] is uniquely attached to Mother Nature. It simply comes off a wood beetle that will lay eggs inside some unsuspecting insect. And in so doing, the form of the egg will become the host for this new creature. That’s hideous. But that was what it was. And you can’t keep repeating that because the joke gets boring. Go on, leave that behind, and see where it can evolve. So we’re looking where we’re going to evolve.”
Now, Variety has come right out and said that Ridley Scott will direct a third Alien prequel which is currently in the script phase. Will it still be the long planned Alien: Awakening? Or has the idea morphed into something new? That isn’t quite apparent from the report.
Thus far, Disney hasn’t made an official announcement about this third Alien prequel, and there is no timeline for production start. Disney doesn’t do R-rated movies of this nature, but the company has made it clear that they will have a new Fox friendly banner that will allow for more R-rated fare, like this and Deadpool, to exist under the Disney umbrella. Though, it’s possible the franchise could also go the PG-13 route, as it did with the first Alien Vs. Predator movie.
Related: Ridley Scott Insists He’s Still Making an Alien: Covenant Sequel
Ridley Scott talked a lot about Alien: Awakening before Covenant arrived as a disappointment at the box office. The movie reportedly saw the Engineers seeking revenge on android David for committing genocide against then. The previous movie set the stage for this to happen, and Michael Fassbender is happy to come back. It isn’t clear when and if Disney will officially announce this is happening. Check out Variety for their take.
