Now for some shocking news. AICN recently did an interview with James Cameron and he reveals that he was already writing a script for Alien 5 until Fox told him that they were going to do AVP instead:
QUINT: I remember before Paul W.S. Anderson did ALIEN VS PREDATOR it came out that you kind of made an offer to do another ALIEN film with Ridley Scott…
JAMES CAMERON: Yeah. Ridley and I talked about doing another ALIEN film and I said to 20th Century Fox that I would develop a 5th ALIEN film. I started working on a story, I was working with another writer and Fox came back to me and said, “We’ve got this really good script for ALIEN VS PREDATOR and I got pretty upset. I said, “You do that you’re going to kill the validity of the franchise in my mind.” Because to me, that was FRANKENSTEIN MEETS WEREWOLF. It was Universal just taking their assets and starting to play them off against each other.
QUINT: Milking it, totally.
JAMES CAMERON: Milking it. So, I stopped work. Then I saw ALIEN VS PREDATOR and it was actually pretty good. (laughs) I think of the 5 ALIEN films, I’d rate it 3rd.
Wow, I can’t believe Fox ditched Cameron’s Alien 5 idea for Paul Anderson’s AVP script. Although. I have to disagree with Cameron’s last comment about rating it 3rd. I think he’s still upset over Alien 3.