Alien: Covenant 2 written and ready to go! Yesterday we covered a set report from the Sydney Morning Herald talking about the practical Alien effects. But hidden away at the bottom of that report was a little gem that we missed.
It turns out the next entry in Ridley Scott’s prequel trilogy is already written and Scott is ready to start work on it next year (it’s possible Ridley Scott may mean 2017 as the set visits took place in June 2016), assuming Alien: Covenant is successful:
“While working on Alien: Covenant, he had the next instalment written so he is ready to keep advancing the saga.
“You’ve got to assume to a certain extent success and from that you’d better be ready,” he says. “You don’t want a two-year gap. So I’ll be ready to go again next year.”
When Alien: Covenant hits the big screens in May, there will have been close to a 5 year gap between the release of Prometheus and it’s sequel. It did seem like 20th Century Fox and Ridley Scott were struggling with the direction in which to take Prometheus 2 but it’s looking like Ridley Scott knows what path he is taking going forward.
Alien: Covenant 2 written and ready to go for 2018!
In the recent set reports it was mentioned that 20th Century Fox had commissioned a ten page Alien bible to ensure consistency with the new Alien prequels and the then upcoming Alien 3.2.
Something else that the set reports mentioned was the crew had talked about holding back biomechanical elements of the Alien design and building towards that in the later films. Perhaps this shows a little hint towards where the rest of the films may go? Towards the return of H.R Giger’s creature from the first film?
Thanks to Ingwar for picking up on this. Keep a close eye on Alien vs. Predator Galaxy for the latest on Alien: Covenant! You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get the latest on your social media walls. You can also join in with fellow Alien fans on our forums!
Granted, my preferred sequel to Prometheus would've had them leapfrogging the film timeline entirely and having Shaw and David awaken from cryo five hundred years later - making these stories the larger superstructure of the Alien films as opposed to slavish prequels - but that's moot and here we are.
For that matter, regardless of whether Blomkamp gets to make his sequel or not, there's bound to be a future set Alien sequel which may not center on the Ripley character. Would fans still be on board, or is it likely there feeling burned out by the many growing numbers of Alien Spin off movies ect.
True.. Only time will tell.
Covenant is potentially (not practically yet) the first movie of the trilogy so somebody has to carry the torch. In my opinion an ultimate antagonist it's going to be David. According to leaks our alive protagonist(s)
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Gotta hand it to Jon Spaihts for igniting his passion. Sure, Ridley had the idea that the space jockeys were wearing suits, but it was Jon that tied their history to mankind's.
Still searching for a few.
Did find another Gibson A3 draft not long ago - I never knew he did more than the one.
Are any of these fun to read even though they're fan scripts?
And no matter how you turn this, even if he starts Covenant 2 by the beginning of 2018 it will be mid 2019 before we see the light of it.
Thats already 3 years ahead and closing to 85 years. And thats a very well respected age for a filmmaker.
Hopefully the dude's healthy.
http://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=53507.msg2125977#msg2125977
I can't find the thread I made but here's the script in question.
http://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=55429
Here we go. All the fake scripts I came across.
Hopefully they'll come out at some point. I'm going to be trying to get my hands on them.
I don't think Covenant is going to be a retread of Alien, anymore than Alien Resurrection was. Yes, they'll have similar tropes but Covenant is telling a much different story over all.
Scott was/is producing Alien 3.2. He was never in danger of having the franchise taken away from him.
I was surprised in the Wayne Haag interview when he said Ridley was keen on returning to Australia to film the sequels.
Ridley likes to make different films, especially at this point in his life, so him directing the sequels just shows how committed he is to this franchise. I think he just hasn't found the right director to pass the torch yet. Denis Villeneuve would be a strong candidate but I don't think he has any interest in following Ridley's footsteps yet again.
Who's writing this? I hope its Michael Green because he did a good job with Logan.
Seeing both the Jack Paglen and Michael Green scripts would be cool.
Bingo. I think a lot of people were expecting a movie with a serious chronicles of riddick flavor lol.
I was watching an interview with him from '79 and he hasn't changed a bit. I think when he was delivered his first expression was that frowned, quizzical raised eyebrow.
Intrigued.
Very well-said.
So I think that ultimately it made sense for this to become an Alien movie, and I don't think Ridley is a hack for changing his course.
Ripley is 10 years old at the event of Covenant, Prometheus being set in 2092, and Covenant being ten years later 2102, her character doesn't dabble into the events of the series until Alien, her charcter as a little girl doesn't have a function that impacts the early part of the series or odds to the story, if she so did this would conflict with how she's present in the events of Alien. If another character is present in Covenant as being a relative many have sighted that the inclusion of "Ripley's Mother" comes across as contrived, very similar circumstances happen to Ripley's mother, Ripley herself, then her daughter Amanda.
Now the angle of being a movie set after Aliens may be considered a cop out "and fairly so" they wanted to follow on from the point when the Alien series was given the exciting renovating era of James Cameron's entry. Expanding upon all the potential this installment introduced, its the one the launched the series into a full fledged franchise, inspired numorous comics and various stories set at this particular setting.
Everything that came after such as Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection while having merits is where the series lost momentum, the closest attempt was Joss Whedons script for the earth set Alien Revelation which Sigourney Weaver refused becasue it was set on earth. Cameron and Ridley talked about venturing back to the Alien series, but Fox chose t pursue AVP for higher financial reasons. Though whether or not they make Blomkamp's mother, it'll either not be made and life will go on, or it will be made and you don't have to see it.
"Not wholeheartedly" doesn't necessarily mean his own heart isn't in it. It could just be him saying this new film is about more than bringing back classic elements (There's a lot which is new as well he said.)
How is it more of out of place than retconning just to bring her character back, though? I would much prefer a prequel Ripley than a retcon Ripley.
Audiences have continued to pour money into tired franchises, so that is no evidence of anything. What we are talking about is what James Cameron was talking about. This movie is consciously repeating itself to be safe. That's a sad thing for an artist pushing 80 to feel forced into doing. He has a limited number of movies he can make, and we just traded Prometheus 2 for a flipper baby movie combining two franchises that were never meant to be connected. Remember AvP? That's basically what this is: Alien versus Prometheus. Whoever wins, we lose.
Seriously, if you read the plot of Alien, it would be almost a joke for everyone. Just a slasher movie.
But Alien is my favorite movie because everything is incredible (artistic direction, rhythm, actors, directing, metaphor, symbols, levels of reading ...). Ridley can tell many things with a simple script.
I don't mind this so much. These movies are formulaic to a point.
In a sequel you always give them the same, but something different. I think Ridley will do a good job of combining the two. I don't think it will be as good as the first two films, but hopefully tell a story that's effective and can stand on its own.
Actually on ho its confirmed she was born in 2092, http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Ellen_Ripley
So while her character does exist I agree it would be out of place to force her character or even a relative of hers into the prequel series.
ripley doesnt exist yet.
Prometheus wasn't their most promising property though, was it. Otherwise this would be Prometheus 2. I firmly believe Neil Blomkamp's concept art for Aliens 2 reignited Fox's and subsequently Ridley Scott's interest in Alien.
I say we let the cinema going audience dictate whether Alien is "tired" out.
So it's likely that he could drop The Cartel or do it after Covenant 2. And he still has the adaptation of The Prisoner that he's supposedly attached to as well.
I'm really looking forward to see Wraiths made by Scott. But when? If Scott is planning to do Covenant 2 next then probably I have to wait
It's likely he could have been referring to the year after Covenant releases. And again, he's doing Wraiths Of The Broken Land this year.
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You could start with a tough character and break them. that is the alternative. As the universe opens to them they unwind more and more. More a lovecraftian story than anything else. Just, those movies don't typically make money. The idea is that most people need strong characters and humans to relate to the film. they need to watch a character grow and evolve or overcome and be victorious. This is why Godzilla gets 7 minutes of screen time in his movie.
The best idea might be to have a crew survive so you can have their group dynamic grow and change over the course of the films. You can spend time getting to know all of them instead of only the strong survives type writing. You can shift focus around and not just have one top star, you can move that mantle around and keep it interesting.
In fact I wouldn't even want Shaw back - whether it was Noomi's acting or the poor script she had to work with, I wasn't that invested in Shaw and I'd really struggle to find myself rooting for her.
I do want a non-android human lead character that I can root for across several franchise movies though. And therein lies the problem. As soon as you do that, the default character bio is: movie 1, slightly soft character is tested to their limits, movie 2 is character toughens up, movie 3 character continues/finishes their personal quest etc...
Performance capture, nothing's impossible.
And it's becoming more and more a standard.
Easiest way to make anyone eternal.