Excitement surrounding Neill Blomkamp's early concept art for a proposed Aliens sequel was short-lived once Fox paused development in favor of a Prometheus sequel. Word is that the studio gave in Ridley Scott's demands that he should be allowed to make Alien: Covenant first. Blomkamp's film is still floating out there in pre-development hell, and according to Sigourney Weaver the screenplay will wrap up Ripley's storyline.
“We have a great script," she tells EW, "Fox asked us to delay so Ridley Scott could shoot his [second] Prometheus movie. That was too bad because we would have already done it by now. Now that we’re waiting for that, I have a couple of Avatars to do and Neill has The Gone World. So we’ll have to see what happens when we get back, when those projects are over... It’s a great story and it’s satisfying to me to give this woman an ending.”
Weaver's last turn as Ellen Ripley in Alien Resurrection saw a cloned version of the character headed for Earth. It wasn't quite the send-off fans were hoping for, Blomkamp included. It's been rumored for over a year that his script is engineered to splinter away from the last two sequels, something Weaver now confirms:
“It’s just as if, you know, the path forks and one direction goes off to three and four and another direction goes off to Neill’s movie. It’s just more, I would say, following Jim Cameron’s story about these characters, rather than just ending up in this sort of monastery in space, which was [Alien 3 screenwriter] Vincent Ward’s idea and Fox elected to go in that direction. I think [Alien 3 director] Fincher was fine with that. Each director kind of wanted to create a whole new set of circumstances. In this case, it picks up, it follows directly the circumstances of Jim Cameron’s Aliens.”
A brief refresher: Aliens ends with Ripley, Hicks and Newt snuggled up in hypersleep, floating through space. Alien 3 begins as their pod crashes onto a prison planet, where it's later revealed Hicks and Newt died during their lengthy naps. That won't be the case here. They'll survive - along with the aliens: “The script itself has so much in it that’s so original, but also really satisfies the, I would say, the primal needs of the aliens,” Weaver says. What else do they need other than warm hosts?
While we've got some time before Fox gives it the thumbs-up, Weaver seems confident that might happen sooner than you think. “I hope it won’t be a few [years]. I hope it’ll be a couple. But we’ll see.”
Images: Fox
