Ridley Scott has mentioned he could potentially make two more sequels to Alien: Covenant. Next week, the director’s Prometheus followup (and by definition Alien prequel) will finally hit theaters, and initial reactions indicate that it’s a good-but-not-great addition to the franchise. There has already been much discussion about how Scott might follow up Covenant, with Scott himself at one point saying he wants to make Alien movies forever, and some folks floating rumors that Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley herself might return to the series with the help of CGI de-aging.

Separating firm fact from speculation regarding Alien can sometimes be difficult, especially when Ridley Scott himself doesn’t always seem sure of what he wants to do. New comments from Scott do clear up the short-term future of the franchise somewhat, while leaving the series’ longer-term prospects still up in the air.

In an interview with Yahoo! Movies UK, Scott addressed the issue of the franchise’s immediate future, and he did at least confirm that there will be one more sequel and that this movie is already in the works. Fans won’t have to wait very long for this next installment:

“I’ll probably be filming it within a year. It’ll be out within a year and nine months. It’s weird when you’re writing, doing, planning, thinking about franchises, it’s amazing how it opens up and starts to evolve.”


After offering that reassuringly concrete assessment of the immediate situation, Scott went back to being vague as regards the Alien series down-the-road. Scott was asked if the sequel after Covenant would connect directly to the original Alien film (a development folks have been speculating about for quite some time) and he responded:

“I don’t know. [I’ll make] maybe two more [films], or maybe one more, I don’t know.”

Prior rumors had the next Alien film after Alien: Covenant being called Awakening but those now appear to have been false. In other recent remarks, Scott stuck a fork in the long-talked-about Neill Blomkamp project Alien 5, a film which was to have brought back the characters of Ripley and Hicks but was shut down after Scott returned to the franchise with Prometheus (at least we’ll always have the cool concept art).

With Blomkamp’s project firmly out of the way, the Alien series belongs entirely to Ridley Scott. It can’t be said that Scott doesn’t have lots of ideas about the broader Alien mythology, with its diverse array of lifeforms both biological and synthetic. The question is whether he has enough such ideas to keep the series going for two more films, and whether those ideas can be blended with traditional survival-horror elements in a way that satisfies audiences.

http://screenrant.com/alien-covenant...-ridley-scott/