Ridley Scott Comments On Neill Blomkamp’s Canceled Alien Movie

Director Neill Blomkamp was excited to make his mark on the Alien franchise, teaming up with Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn for a true sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens while ignoring the events of Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection.

Unfortunately, due to series creator Ridley Scott‘s own prequel films undergoing production, those plans never came to fruition.

Blomkamp and Weaver expressed hope until production on Alien: Covenant began in earnest, with Fox deciding to cancel their plans to follow through on the District 9 director’s proposed Alien 5. Scott recently expressed that he didn’t think it would happen, and now he’s opened up about the reasons why.

“They wanted to do Alien, er, Awakening—Neill Blomkamp,” Scott explained to IGN. “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.”

So was Scott ever cool with Blomkamp making a film in the Alien franchise? Scott’s words tend to sway on one side or the other depending on which day he’s speaking about it.

“But they didn’t go forward with it, Fox, so I just kind of kept out of it,” Scott said. “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.”

So Scott’s words seem to indicate that he didn’t ax Blomkamp’s plans for the Aliens sequel, but 20th Century Fox did. Either way, Scott obviously feels like that was the right choice.

Alien: Covenant is in theaters May 19.

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