It’s been over 10 days sinceRidley Scottsaid anything about hisPrometheussequel(s), but not to worry, an update has arrived. The filmmaker has been keen on expounding at length about his plans for thePrometheusfollow-upAlien: Covenantand beyond, with his comments evolving to a place where he now says he plans to direct all thePrometheussequels, which will in turn finally close the loop toAlienby “coming in around the back”. While initially it sounded like Scott planned aPrometheustrilogy, the director now claims he has two more sequels planned afterCovenant.
Speaking at a press conference in Sydney, Australia (viaTHR) where he’s getting ready to begin pre-production onAlien: Covenant, Scott revealed his plans for two more sequels:
Alien: Covenantand the following two films will be origin stories, answering the “very basic questions posed inAlien: why the alien, who might have made it and where did it come from?”
Scott’s prompt forPrometheuswas all to do with the Space Jockey, and indeed he’s still lambasting theAliensequels for never asking what he sees as the most obvious questions in the franchise:
“Prometheus 1was borne out of my frustration that onAlien 1in 1979 - I only did one as I don’t normally do sequels. I was amazed that in the 3 that followed that no-one asked the question ‘why the Alien, who made it and why?’ Very basic questions. So I came up with the notion ofPrometheus 1,which starts to indicate who might have made it and where it came from.”
Scott also spoke about his plans forAlien: Covenantand how it connects to theAlienFranchise:
“So I’m now going to the next one, which is the next evolution directly connected with the first one, which was this Shaw, when he replacedMichael Fassbenderin two pieces and we’ll kind of pick it up there and it will evolve. When that’s finished there’ll be another one and then another one which will gradually drive into the back entrance of the film in 1979,”
Last week, 20th Century Fox unveiledthe official synopsisforCovenant, which follows the crew of the spaceship Covenant who discover what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world whose sole inhabitant is Fassbender’s character David.Noomi Rapace’s name was nowhere to be found in the synopsis and cast listing, and indeed THR reports that Rapace “will only appear briefly” in the film despite the initial idea forPrometheus 2being a road trip-type film with Rapace and Fassbender’s characters venturing to the homeworld of the Engineers.
Does that mean we’re in for anotherPrometheus-type film that doesn’t delve into the Engineers' origins, or has David in fact made it to their planet only to find it desolate? If it’s the former, I can imagine there being some frustration on the part of audiences, since that’s basically just a twist on the plot toPrometheus.
Production onAlien: Covenantis set to begin in March and will last 16 weeks, with Scott saying it will be a mix of location and studio shoots with locations including “monumental forest and monumental rock and the rest will be in the studio with fairly formidable CGI.” Indeed, Scott pointed out the extensive CGI used inThe Martianto great effect, saying he has no aversion to doing plenty of studio shoots for the sci-fi sequel.
But back to that sequels comment, the synopsis referred toAlien: Covenantas “the second chapter in a prequel trilogy,” but it now appears that Scott has taken it upon himself to expand this into a quadrilogy. Until he changes his mind again. Really this is all par for the course when it comes to the development process of sequels. The only difference here is that Scott isn’t averse to talking at length about the current plans for the franchise at any point in time, so we’ve seen thisPrometheusfollow-up evolve from a film that moves further away from theAlienfranchise bydelving into the origins of the Engineerswith Fassbender and Rapace as our guides, to another seemingly horror-type feature in which a space crew stumbles upon a seemingly abandoned planet with secrets of its own. Perhaps Scott opted to stretch out that Engineer storyline, which would account for the additional sequel. Or perhaps this will all change again significantly by the time filming begins next spring.
