Ridley Scott, who remains one of the hardest working people in Hollywood, is still planning to make another Alien movie. Although the last film in the franchise, 2017’s Alien: Covenant, did not light up the box office, the 82-year-old Scott believes there is still much more to the Alien world to explore. It’s not clear where the Alien series will go next, but Scott said he does not think he will pick up after Prometheus and Covenant.
“That’s in process. We went down a route to try and reinvent the wheel with Prometheus and Covenant,” Scott told Forbes in a new interview this week. “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?’” Scott said this was the “fundamental question” of the franchise moving forward.
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The Alien franchise kicked off in 1979 and was known for having different directors work on each of the main films. James Cameron helmed Aliens in 1986, David Fincher made a difficult directing debut with Alien 3 in 1992 and French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed 1997’s Alien Resurrection. Scott returned to the franchise with Prometheus in 2012, intending to kick off a prequel series. He directed Covenant in 2017, which earned better reviews, but was not a major box office success.
Since Covenant opened, Scott has frequently discussed more Alien movies. In May, he told the Los Angeles Times there is still “a lot of mileage” in the series. “What I always thought when I was making it, the first one, why would a creature like this be made and why was it traveling in what I always thought was a kind of war-craft, which was carrying a cargo of these eggs,” Scott said. “What was the purpose of the vehicle and what was the purpose of the eggs? That’s the thing to question — who, why, and for what purpose is the next idea, I think.”
Scott was in the middle of filming his latest historical epic, The Last Duel, starring Adam Driver and Matt Damon when the coronavirus pandemic hit. The movie is now scheduled to hit theaters on Oct. 15, 2021. It was written by Ben Affleck, Damon, and Nicole Holofcener, and is based on the book of the same name by Eric Jager. Scott also directed the first two episodes of the new HBO Max series, Raised by Wolves, which premiered on Thursday.
