Neill Blomkamp's Aliens movie would give Ripley a proper send-off says Sigourney Weaver

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

Gem Seddon is a freelance writer working to keep all of you updated on all of the latest and greatest movies and shows on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Outside of entertainment journalism, Gem can frequently be found writing about the alternative health and wellness industry, and obsessing over all things Aliens and Terminator on Twitter.