Ridley Scott’s latest project, Raised By Wolves, which premiered this past week on HBO Max, has the director and executive producer once again returning to the world of science fiction he’s well known for. It reminds one of the aimlessly floating Alien franchise, which has been without gravity since 2017’s Covenant was met with mixed reviews and underwhelming box office reports.
Over the years, we’ve heard a number of rumors about the fate of the Alien franchise moving forward. We heard that Fox was pulling on the plug on an Alien sequel in late 2017, and Ridley Scott conversely said a few months back that he felt there was a “lot of mileage” left in the franchise. Here’s what the filmmaker says now about his plans for Alien’s future:
That’s in process. We went down a route to try and reinvent the wheel with Prometheus and Covenant. Whether or not we go directly back to that is doubtful because Prometheus woke it up very well. But you know, you’re asking fundamental questions like, ‘Has the Alien himself, the facehugger, the chestburster, have they all run out of steam? Do you have to rethink the whole bloody thing and simply use the word to franchise?’ That’s always the fundamental question.
It sounds like Ridley Scott might go in a different direction with the Alien movies again going forward. In an interview with Forbes, the filmmaker, whose breakout film was 1979’s Alien, said it was “doubtful” he’d be going straight back to the specific story he’d been telling with Prometheus and Covenant.
This conflicts with prior reports that had the next movie in the series perhaps being called Alien: Awakening, which would focus on Michael Fassbinder’s David and the other surviving Engineers, and take place on the planet LV-426, thus finally completely connecting the prequels to the original franchise. But when you hear “rethink the whole bloody thing,” it sounds more like Scott could be abandoning what he’s built upon recently and looking to try something new again.
There is a delicate balance that needs to be set between the nostalgia of the original franchise and creating something new within the franchise that Ridley Scott may be wrestling with. He’s not only three years removed from the Alien franchise now, Fox has been acquired by Disney, bringing in new management behind the $1.3 billion franchise as well.
Ridley Scott is keeping himself busy on other fronts, such as working on a medieval-set film starring Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jodie Comer and Adam Driver called The Last Duel, which is set for 2021. He also might be looking to finally make his Gladiator sequel, and is also developing a movie starring Lady Gaga, Robert de Niro, Al Pacino, Jared Leto and Adam Driver (again) about the 1995 murder of Maurizio Gucci.
What do you think? Would you still like to see the planned Alien sequel be something completely new, or are you content with Ridley Scott giving it some more air? Vote in our poll and stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more movie news.
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