Ridley Scott May Have Accidentally Revealed Details About The Next Alien Film

The Alien franchise is an utterly bizarre series. Equal parts horror madness and philosophy lesson, it has conjured as many questions as it has induced scares over the years. Now that Ridley Scott has finally returned to the proper Alien narrative with Alien: Covenant (following the polarizing Prometheus), he seems incredibly excited to expand the Alien story in unexpected ways. This will ultimately involve making the next Alien movie a prequel to Covenant, which will be called Awakening. Scott explained:

It will go Prometheus, Awakening, Covenant.. fairly integral where this colonization ship is on the way...If this is successful, and then the next one, then there will definitely be three more.

Alien: Covenant star Katherine Waterston cut Ridley Scott off during his explanation of the current Alien continuity to Fandango due to her fear that he was giving too much away, but not before he made one thing very clear: the next film will seemingly be titled Awakening, and it will take place between Prometheus and Covenant. This makes quite a bit of sense, as Covenant seems like it has tenuous connections to Prometheus, but at this point, they still make very little sense. With Awakening, Scott will seemingly go back and flesh out the middle of the story in a way that enhances the first and second movies, as well as the other entries in the Alien franchise.

Making Alien: Awakening a prequel to Covenant, and a sequel to Prometheus also opens the door for a few major creative decisions. The most important is the fact that we will likely get to see what specifically happens to Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw following her decision to confront The Engineers at the end of Prometheus. Scott has said that her presence will be felt "in a way" during the events of Covenant, but Awakening could go much deeper and explore her ultimate fate.

It will be interesting to see what Ridley Scott does with the Alien franchise because he apparently does not want to give up on certain elements from Prometheus that turned fans off. The series moved in a very different direction from Scott's original intention when James Cameron took over with Aliens back in 1986, and now it appears that he's finally moving in the direction that he initially set out on with the very first Alien film. It doesn't sound like he has any intention of slowing down anytime soon either, as the legendary director has made it abundantly clear that he is on board for six more Alien films if the franchise can sustain it.

Alien: Covenant will burst its way into theaters later this year on May 19.