Ridley Scott's Prometheus is clearly connected to the larger Alien universe, but the connection actually used to be a lot stronger. Prior to bringing Damon Lindelof coming aboard for a rewrite, 20th Century Fox had hired writer Jon Spaihts to pen the original drafts of what was originally going to be a more on-the-nose prequel to Scott's 1979 sci-fi/horror classic. Titled Alien: Engineers, the version of the story was much more obviously connected to the first four movies and even featured both chest-bursters and facehuggers. And now you can read for yourself what it could have been.
While a few details from Spaihts' draft were revealed back in October, now the full script has found its way online in digital format. Posted over at Scribd, it's quite the long read at 118 pages, but it is very much the real deal. After a user on Twitter found the script they sent Spaihts a message asking for him to authenticate it. His response? A simple, "That's authentic." You can read the full screenplay embedded at the end of this post.
For those of you that end up reading it, do you wish that they had stuck with this version of the story or do you think Lindelof's version was superior? While I wasn't a big fan of Scott's latest film, I will say that it got one thing right: Prometheus is a much better title than Alien: Engineers. They made some serious missteps and miscalculations in the making of this movie, but that was definitely something they got right.
