Jon Spaihts Talks Prometheus

There’s a really interesting interview with the original Prometheus writer Jon Spaihts over on Collider. While there isn’t any spoilers about the movie, this is the first time I believe Jon Spaihts has spoken out about his Prometheus script in any great detail. As we already know, Damon Lindelof did rewrites to his script. Exactly what was changed remains a mystery. It was originally rumoured that Lindelof was brought aboard to make the script PG13 friendly and trim several scenes down. Spaihts is still vague about the changes but he mentions that Lindelof’s script contains the same plot, characters and mythology as his drafts.

Do you know how much your first draft changed by the time that it started filming?

SPAIHTS:  Certainly, it evolved a lot, while I was on it.  I wrote five rapidly evolving drafts that changed a lot, even on my watch.  And, I’ve read Damon’s draft as well.  I would say that what Damon did was more of a rebalancing of the story than a reinvention.  My plot, my characters, and my mythology are all still firmly in place, but he found a way to complicate it and elaborate on some character relationships and mythology, and he wrote some great new scenes and a lot of new ideas.  It’s impossible to be very specific without getting into spoilers, and I want to preserve the secrecy of the story, as much as I can.  So, there is definitely a lot of new energy and some new ideas, but when I read the script or watch the movie, I see a story that I feel a lot of ownership of.

Check out the full interview. He goes into quite a lot of detail about the scriptwriting process on Prometheus. Thanks to Cvalda for the news.