Speaking to ET Online at the red carpet for Chappie, Neill Blomkamp’s latest science-fiction film staring Sigourney Weaver due out this week, Neill told them that Alien 5 would “probably” enter pre-production next week. They also talked a little about Sigourney’s involvement in the project:
“Weaver and Blomkamp, who both walked the red carpet at the New York premiere of their upcoming sci-fi collaboration Chappie, stopped to talk to ET’s Jason Dundas, and they both teased the long-awaited project.
When asked about whether or not she was coming back to reprise her role as alien-fighting badass Ellen Ripley, Weaver said she would be retuning.
“There are two factors [Neill Blomkamp] needs: Ripley and the Aliens,” Weaver said.
Blomkamp, who directed Chappie and is best known for helming the Oscar-nominated sci-fi epic District 9, confirmed her participation as well.
“She’ll be in the cast,” Blomkamp said. “She is the Alien franchise, to me, so yeah.”
Blomkamp also confirmed that he will begin pre-production on his Alien sequel as early as next week.”
Sigourney’s involvement has always been “maybe” or “hopefully” when brought up so it’s nice to see the intention is to definitely bring her in. Thanks to The Eighth Passenger for the tip.
The set-building would be the biggest and most expensive part.
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I don't know about W-Y but you nailed Fox down to T there.
Stoner WY Executive 1: Guys, guys, listen. I have this GREAT idea. What if, now just bear with me on this, when we finish setting up our new testing facilities, we invite the only people who have survived contact with these things for a visit, give them weapons and permission to kill anything they see...
Stoner WY Executive 2: Ok.....
Stoner WY Executive 1: We let them see the Queen, the Nest, everything, all on a specially guided tour with ammo drops every two feet.
Stoner WY Executive 2: Ok.....
Stoner WY Executive 1: Then, once they finish the tour, if they haven't suffered a nervous breakdown and tried to kill us all and blow up the facility by then, we get them to sign off on making it a zoo! Complete with hotels, dining, entertainment for the whole family! We can even hire the survivors to do publicity shoots for the big opening! It'll be just like Jurassic Park!
Stoner WY Executive 2:.......Dude......THAT IS ****ING AWESOME! Let's do it!
I wouldn't assume that the facility is underground. I know that was one of Blomkamp's problems when designing the Halo ring - all the interesting structures were underneath the surface, and he was more interested in blending it with the landscape.
That is a problem on its own, the evil company angle is just stupid, even more stupid would be only one person being good, human conscience is not rare in any company, no matter its dealings, much more than one person would be ethical its just a matter of courage to speak up.
If they want a fresh take for Alien V, have the company been helpful for a change, more than just neutral.
The bad thing about an evil company is that they must lack common sense
Yeah, nor would WY be foolish enough to send her.
Ripley would never agree to take part in the breeding and study of Aliens in any capacity.
Things like that tend to drastically change the landscape.
Surely if pre-production is going to start "next week", you'd know if it was definitely on or not.
Things like can change on a dime in the film industry.
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi62.tinypic.com%2Fdwrom8.jpg&hash=9e6678a6a9560a181ae4d3fd4aa7bb21949bccb9
Come on! OUT WITH IT.
No judgement.
but getting back to the pile of engineer bodies, I only see the indication of chestbursters. Again, I think a story about early history earthling men and women being willfully abducted and experimented on, could be something really creepy.
Pretty much, and I couldn't substantiate it completely for you guys, which would lead to more nonsense.
I am also interested in that story.
It is top secret or something like that?
Mortal after all
If you're ignoring Alien 3 and 4 (which I definitely aprove), just ignore them, without any dumb explanation. Just never mention them, simple and cold as that.
The nightmare in stasis theory is "close" to being good. Actually, it's one of the most viable ones.
But the indie filmmaker I have inside me tells it's another Ripley-clone dumb level piece of plot.
It's a cheap story telling mechanism. It's actually really, really cheesy and cheap.
So my vote goes to simply ignoring them.
If you REALLY want to give some sort of oficial explanation, ok, on the Bluray extras, you can add a short scene where Ripley is in stasis, having all kinds of bad dreams.
It must be no more than an extra on the bluray.
But for the main story, never adress that. That dream thing is super cheap, cheesy storytelling.
Maybe because weren't all impregnated.
The creatures are capable of killing as well and the mutations by the accelerant seem to be random, if a Trilobite was created, it would need only to infect one Engineer to create a creature that could kill the others.
This reminds me of something I was contemplating:
Fifield and Milburn find a pile of Engineer's bodies stacked high that look like they've exploded from the inside, yes?
But if the goo only creates a facehugger-type creature through infected male to female intercourse, then how did all these Engineers become impregnated.
Until otherwise explained, I have a great sexual-gigeresque PROMETHEUS prequel in my head that is basically the Engineers visiting Earth and abducting our women and taking them to LV223 to mate with them, and this is how the events that ruined the engineers on LV223 took place. It also explains the cave-paintings - like the Engineers are beloved on Earth and they select lucky human women and take them aways from their families to 'Paradise' -which is what LV223 looks like 2000 years prior due to the use of their strong terraforming pyramids. The human women are worshipped and these huge rituals take place beore the Engineers take them as a 'wife' or 'bride' and bring them back to LV223 to run horrible xenomorph making mating experiments on them.
Actually with aa little work, this could be the plot of Prometheus 2.
What story is that?
And I'm loving your ideas "Bring Back Jonesy."
- The ghostly images of the Prometheus 'Engineers' that are seen desperately running through the complex due to some 'incident' or other...are showing 'Engineers' who tried to get away from a large (unseen) vaguely-humanoid creature which was created by either a 'goo'-related accident or a 'goo'-related weapons experiment...
...this 'incident' revealed by the 'holo' recording was something that occurred a very, very long time in the past...and it's THAT large creature which then ended up stealing/'piloting' one of the various 'Juggernaut' ships available at the time...
...inside that particular ship were stored many egg-shaped 'bio-weapons' which were originally laid by another type of creature that those long-dead 'Engineers' had some kind of dealings with at the time...and the large creature was attacked and impregnated by a face-hugger from one of those eggs it disturbed when it initially entered the ship...
...however, the creature survived long enough to successfully fly the ship away from LV-223 (where Prometheus is set), but ended up crash-landing on LV-426 (where Alien is set)...due to the chestbuster stage eventually doing it's work...
...and as it crashed, an automatic 'warning system' automatically kicked in from the ship at that point, to indicate that this was effectively now an 'off-limits' area due to the dangerous cargo that had been stored aboard it...
__________
(On the other hand...if you happen to like the whole 'Engineer' as 'spacejockey' (from Alien) scenario regardless, then instead of a separate, unseen creature, I suppose you could choose to imagine that it was actually one of those long-dead, scared 'Engineers' in the 'holo' recordings who managed to get to a 'Juggernaut' at the time...but then crashed it on LV-426 thanks to being face-hugged)
On the other hand...maybe the 'Engineers' have actually styled their 'snorkel'-like helmets (as well as the one seen on the 'Juggernaut' chair in Prometheus) on something they 'revere'...something that's bigger than them in the scheme of things?...
...something which we saw the long-dead remains of, inside a much older version of the 'Juggernaut' seen in Alien?...
Now, I really must get on with my day.
Yes, and a lot of artists on the production team had to fight for or sneak in Giger-esque details.
There's a story behind why this all happened but it's probably irresponsible to talk about it.
There was an interview with someone involved who mentioned it was a deliberate choice of Ridley Scott's to remove the 'bio' element from biomechanical. I don't quite remember who.
Xenomrph had that theory too that maybe the SJ created the Engineers and then the latter sought to do the same.
(I love them myself but hey, can't please everyone.)
Even I personally don't like to think of the Engineers and the SJ as the same thing, there's just too many differences between them for someone like me- I like to think that considering they are "human" the Engineers see the SJ the same way we do and decided to imitate him.
(This would account for all of the differences between them right down to the bio weapons each used.)
The Derelict on LV-426 and the crashed Juggernaut on LV-223 are two different ships y'know?
Plus there's enough differences between them that you can reasonably see the Engineers and the SJ two different things.
(Without a null fan cut.)
1. You can choose to happily accept BOTH outcomes regardless, and just alternate between which one you decide to watch, depending on your mood at the time.
2. You can choose to look on one outcome as being your favourite, and just look on the other as occurring in some kind of bizarre 'alternate' universe/timeline.
(Some may wish to include Prometheus and/or the AvP movies in this 'alternate' universe/timeline too, by the way!
3. You can choose to dismiss one outcome as merely being some kind of disturbing 'cryo-nightmare(s)' Ripley went on to have after Aliens concluded, which didn't actually happen.
(...and EVEN if Blomkamp's version ends up referencing the original movies as being Ripley's feverish 'cryo-nightmare(s)', you can still choose to dismiss his outcome as the one which is Ripley's ACTUAL 'cryo-nightmare' if you wish! - you decide)
4. In fact, you can choose to totally ignore EVERY outcome altogether if you wish, and think of them as ALL being 'cryo-nightmares'...or simply mere 'fan fiction which shouldn't even be considered worthy of being associated with the greatness of Alien & Aliens.
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I outlined some of the reasons which make it easy for me to imagine Alien 3 & Alien Resurrection as just being feverish 'cryo-nightmares' a few posts back....as I look on the producer's 'special edition' (Assembly Cut) of Alien 3 as a very mixed bag too, compared to some others around here.
For instance, I think the Theatrical version's 'Dog-burster' (a Rottweiler) imagery is superior to the 'Ox-burster' version...and is a far better fit for the final grown-up creature seen in the movie.
Despite this, I would have been interested to see how Fincher's proper 'special edition' version would have turned out, if he'd done it himself...and wonder if we would have seen a lot more of the deleted shots of his fully-formed creature incorporated. Ah well, it was not to be. However, for those of you who may be unaware of some of the still-deleted material from Fincher's entry, here's a link to a very good description of it, along with some pics and clips -
And as for the hugely frustrating Prometheus movie...I will only include it into my own personal Alien canon once I get around to fan editing a version for myself which excludes the shots of the 'Engineer' getting into the 'pilot's chair'...so that I can imagine some OTHER 'spacejockey' being piloted the ship seen in Alien after all!
Apologies, I accidentally posted my previous comments before I was finished, so here's that link to the Alien 3 deleted material that was missing - http://www.weyland-yutani-archives.com/archive/1121
As far as Prometheus is concerned, I was also about to say that in the meantime I can only watch Agent 9's excellent 'Prometheus Special Edition' fan edit with any satisfaction...seeing as it includes a lot of the great deleted moments, along with the younger 'Weyald' scene as it's intro. (google/youtube his fine trailer for that, and seek it out if you're interested)
I just hope that Prometheus 2 will give us far less loose-ends than the Theatrical cut did.
You're right that Fox butchered alot of Finch's ideas but still, it was not a typical Alien film in the least. Remember this is the time when the Alien franchise was close to the height of its popularity with toys, video games, comics and everything in between. Xenomorph ripoffs were popping up left and right and Giger art or Giger-inspired art was quite popular. It would have been a relatively simple matter to add some guns and more aliens to the movie and make it a more action-oriented film. Maybe they could have been like the video games, with Ripley (and maybe a handful of surviving prisoners) navigating the labyrinthine of the Fury facility, rescuing others and fighting aliens. Given the fact that some of those guys are the last type of people you want to have firearms, this could have made an interesting dynamic. Honestly, come to think of it, this could have made a better film and one that was more in line with the rest of the Alien franchise at the time. But instead, Fox made something far different that bucked the trends at the time. That has to count for something.
Add to the constant rewrites and shooting without a script, Fox totally jumped the gun with Ward (hell of a script, would have loved to seen it)
The reason we idn't get the wooden world was because Fox realised they needed Alien 3 (their moneymaker James Bond was in a lot of legal trouble at the time) and they got cold feet about it being "weird". Fincher kept trying to make someting unique but they scuttled everything they could. Fincher used a "tea cup" to "beer mug" analogy to describe it. Alien 3 isn't remotely leftfield because Fox wanted it to be; they got brave and hired Ward and then f**ked up by trying to reign it all in and ruined the film as a result. David Fincher's real Alien 3 would have been wonderful, but they didn't even allow the conditions for him to sit down and work out the frankenstein script they thrust on his plate..
Some seem to want a continuation of where Ripley clone 8 left off in the open-ended Alien Resurrection...while others want Alien 3 & Alien Res dismissed altogether. And some of those that want Alien 3 & Alien Res dismissed, want them referenced in some way, even if only as 'bad dreams'...while others want them totally ignored altogether. So some of us are going to be a bit miffed it seems, depending on the the outcome.
On top of that, if the characters end up alive and well in this new movie, it seems that some of us would look on this scenario as being set in some kind of 'alternate' universe/timeline along the lines of the latest Star Trek movie reboots. Anyway, call it what you will - reboot, re-imagining, 'alternative' scenario, or 'fan fiction' - one thing's for sure...I never would have guessed in a million years that we end up getting an Alien 5 movie with Weaver playing the ACTUAL Ripley once more after all these years!!
And personally, as someone who prefers to look on the Alien 3 & Alien Res sequels to Aliens as being nothing more than a couple of disturbing 'cryo-sleep nightmares'...the possibility of an 'alternate' onscreen outcome for Ripley, Hicks, and Newt is more than I could have ever hoped for in this franchise.
While there's certainly some watchable moments in Alien 3, it's depressingly downbeat storyline set amongst a cast of mainly unlikeable characters was NOT the way I hoped this franchise would continue after Aliens. It's relentlessly nihilistic tone in drab surroundings was certainly an unexpected and wrong-footing turn of events, I'll give it that...but I'd have much rather spent some more time with Hicks & Newt again - especially as the expectations for this sequel were sky-high at the time, after the previous successes of Alien & Aliens. And of course, the events of Alien 3 unfortunately led to the ridiculous storyline that was concocted for Alien Resurrection...which presented us all with the absolute low-point of the franchise...the 'Newborn'... *shudder*
So yeah, I welcome this 'alternative' sequel to Aliens if it indeed comes about...especially if we get Hick's back for a while too, as Blomkamp's concept art promises. (I sure hope he'll wear an 'eye-patch' though, as that dead eyeball just looks gross in the artwork!)
In the meantime, I'll continue to think of the Aliens sequels as being merely 'bad dreams'...and the 4 main 'continuity anomalies' of Alien 3's intro. scenes make it very easy for me to do so -
1. The fact that there's a mysterious appearance of an egg which is attached to the ceiling (!) of a section of the Sulaco's interior...despite the fact that the Queen had her egg-sac completely ripped off in Aliens. (yes, there's one or two theories, but none that satisfy me)
2. The fact that the lettering on the Sulaco is now WHITE instead of BLACK. (yes, we only got to see the other side of the Sulaco in Aliens, but I prefer to believe that the lettering was black on BOTH sides of the ship)
3. The fact that it's NOT actually Newt in the cryo-tube (it's a different actress altogether - no big deal, but it suits my purpose!)
4. The fact that the cryo-tubes are a totally DIFFERENT design to the ones that Ripley & co. entered at the end of Aliens.
And here's a good article which covers these and a couple of others in depth - http://www.weyland-yutani-archives.com/archive/1094
But of course, anyone who doesn't like Blomkamp's take on things can equally look on it as being the 'fan fiction' scenario instead, and stick with the original storyline. Just take your pick.
If Alien 3 was simply to be a money-maker, they would have made an Aliens clone, not gotten into wooden planets, monks, prisoners, a bald Ripley and only one alien.