The last few days have seen some previous comments made by Sir Ridley Scott about the Alien: Covenant 2 (aka Alien: Awakening) script recirculate around the movie outlets thanks to the recent Empire Classics Alien Special, a compilation issue that Empire Magazine has published.
HN Entertainment pointed out a comment Sir Ridley Scott made about some details of a potential Alien: Covenant 2:
“Logan’s script would have seen the return of Prometheus’ Engineers, with that species’ survivors coming after the genocidal David. Setting-wise, Scott said it was obvious ‘We’re gonna actually go to the planet’. by which we assume he means LV-426.”
This is actually something Ridley said during the press rounds following Alien: Covenant’s release and is something we previously covered. Ridley also spoke quite openly about his goals for the next Alien film in an interview with Empire Podcast.
“I think the evolution of the Alien himself is nearly over, but what I was trying to do was transcend and move to another story, which would be taken over by A.I.’s. The world that the AI might create as a leader if he finds himself on a new planet. We have actually quite a big layout for the next one – Covenant 2”
Following the resurgence of these details, Birth.Movies.Death ran an article stating that according to their sources there is no Alien: Awakening script!
“Yesterday, upon seeing the latest Alien: Awakening story, I was able to confirm – via a source who’s certainly in a position to know – that there is no Alien: Awakening script at this time. This is not to say that things aren’t happening behind-the-scenes on the Alien franchise (they definitely are), or that a Covenant sequel might not happen somewhere up the road. It is only to say that the rumors re: Logan’s Alien: Awakening draft are inaccurate, and that it hasn’t been written.”
The problem with that is that Sir Ridley Scott claimed numerous times throughout Alien: Covenant’s production and promotion that John Logan was writing or had finished a sequel script. The very first we heard of films coming after Alien: Covenant was Scott saying that a script had been completed.
Perhaps there simply is no draft titled Alien: Awakening? It certainly was confusing as to what Scott meant when the title first emerged as he even listed it after Prometheus and before Covenant.
Regardless, whatever plans Ridley Scott had for the future of the Alien series have more than likely changed from what they were during Covenant’s production. Following the films disappointment at the box office, 20th Century Fox was reportedly “reassessing” the future of the series. Former Fox CEO, Stacey Snider, even talked about looking in a new direction for the series, saying that:
“I trust Ridley [Scott] and Emma [Watts] to know the right story when they find it. When universes are as rich as “Alien,” they can stay in a too familiar groove — in which case you’re in trouble — but they can also find a planet or a storyline or a villain that also lives in that universe that can be groundbreaking.”
If we do ever see a continuation of Sir Ridley Scott’s prequels, it’s unlikely to be whatever version John Logan and Scott were working on during Alien: Covenant’s production. Be sure to have a look back over our Alien: Covenant 2 news archive for all the significant details and events surrounding the film!
Keep a close eye on Alien vs. Predator Galaxy for the latest on all things Alien! You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to get the latest on your social media walls. You can also join in with fellow Alien fans on our forums!
Dog Soldiers is amazing, but that kinda is his Alien movie. It would be weird having him make a tribute to Aliens, then get to actually make an Alien movie. We'd either be sitting there saying - " this is just Dog Soldiers with Aliens" or "This is just a copy of Dog Soldiers which was a Copy of Aliens"
In some kinda weird loop.
thanks, did you find out any other details?
If they picked a title, I'm guessing they already had a story concept that lead to that title.
Things that were copyright fakes were destroyed such as the Bugatti Throne chair. All of David's Lab went into storage, that was supervised by Adam Johansen at ODD Studio. But that may have been for the re-creation of the set for a convention. As for other props, I don't have any info.
I fixed it for you.
https://media.giphy.com/media/drnLcZoetPxew/giphy.gif
Sadly, "Classic" and "Escape from LA" will never go together.
Another thing is, when I liston to all the podcasts with all that moviemakers. Alien is one of the movies that made some of them. Let some years pass and I think there will be one director coming up with a great idea for a new movie. Well ok, I hope it is not Shane Black then
But I also think Ridley Scott should do a lst movie of his origin story line. But the studio should tell him: "This is your budget, that should be the last movie with a right ending, and don't touch the f**king derelict ship from alien!" At the moment I feel a bit uncomfortable with the ending of covenant. It is open and I want to know where it goes next.
That it is. Oh you really should listen to the podcast. There is one with Walter Hill talking about his career and the changes he did on the alien script. And there is also one with Fred Dekker I haven't listen to it yet. In that one with Neil Marshall he is also talking very short about he tried to get on Predators.
The thing with "Prometheus" is it wasn't sold as an Alien movie. It was sold as big budget, extravagant science fiction movie. And the main trailer was wonderful! I alone know a couple people who went to "Prometheus" having no idea it was even tied to Alien.
With that said, I think with Alien (and Predator), both can continue to be profitable franchises, but their ceiling is much lower than Marvel movies and the like. So the key to their success is making these films on lower budgets, and being happy with John Wick type of receipts. But is that enough for Disney?
It will be interesting to see how Disney will approach these properties. Smaller studios would love the smaller sized profits A&P could bring. But will the gargantuan Disney see small theatrical profits like that as a waste of their time? Will they target future A & P movies not released theatrically, but on their streaming service instead? We'll just have to wait and see.
https://postmortempodcast.libsyn.com/neil-marshall
This one?
Large relative items like an Engineer/ SJ sculpt would certainly be the type of thing they would keep. Especially if Scott made some sort of note about what should or shouldn't be in mind for a sequel. That said, things like Wardrobe on a film like this takes up alot more "space" than you might think. It's more about cost/benefit. It's like moving across country with your furniture. Does it cost more to move the couch than replace the couch? The storage cost may actually be more than you'd imagine for something like a Space Jockey prop. They may keep the mold instead, for instance. Whereas, smaller sections of the cockpit of the Covenant would be something cheaper to save than re-fabricate.
In any case, its hard to say. What's reliable is if they had production dates planned / stage rental already... That type of thing is telling.
*Fixed quotes. Hicks.
And there is money to be made with it. Covenant and AVP were just barely profitable, but Prometheus was definitely profitable, and the merchandise, comics, books, & games are also money-makers. It all pales in comparison to Marvel earnings, but it would be dumb to just flush it all.
If they truly don't intend to do anything with it, then it would be stupid not to sell it to another company for a quick buck. I'm sure Warner Brothers, Paramount, or Universal Studios would be happy to own it.
Ok we get it you, Ridley, gave us a vision of an Engineer Race (unimaginative IMO) that didn't have anyone holding their breath for a sequel.
Scott even unceremoniously ditched his teased "Paradise" sequel, loose end. To say "that wasn't the engineers homeworld" was some coping mechanism.
ALIEN-Covenant was awesome as we finally got Xenomorphs against an intriguing "David" story-arc. But was the dip in box office to do with associations with Prometheus or ALIEN?
Ridley Scott was then clutching at straws with his whole "lets make an AI movie" given many critics said the android existentual crisis sub-plot, in Covenant, was more compelling than the Xenomorphs. I think we got the best of both worlds, although its frustrating that yet another loose end went nowhere.
Dan O Bannon is right to a degree. There is only so much you can do within a confined space, in the case of ALIEN literally and thematically speaking.
Most franchises increased their box office by going big and branching into other genres. I'd like a Director to create suspense, atmosphere and danger as much as the next person would like an ALIEN (1979) film.
But we haven't got time for that. It's time to go big or go home. IMO an ALIEN 5 whereby the crew finds the colony ship hijacked by David.
Although:
Alien Isolation & Alien The Cold Forge.
+ (The prospect of an Alien prequel about the SJ in 2010-12 had people salivating much like the Alien itself.)
It was unfortunately written by people who wrote; Passengers, The Mummy, Into Darkness and Tomorrowland.
Omega Underground is fairly solid, they're still around and have merged with Geeks WorldWide. And yeah, 14 months would have put it towards the end of summer 2018 (unless they were talking about the Aussie summer of course).
In that AVPG news article link I gave, Ridley also said; "We're writing [a sequel] now, as we speak". So yeah, like you said it does indeed look like they started writing it or at the very least outlining it. I think that quote of Ridley was taken at the press junket at the premiere. And I think about three weeks after that it would have become increasingly obvious that Covenant wasn't performing well at the box office. So I don't think a huge amount of writing was done either way.
Faults and all, I personally like "Prometheus". But in my humble opinion, I strongly disagree. There's no way I'm going to blame fans, or their expectation, for the calamity that is "Alien Covenant". Nor will I absolve Ridley Scott.
It's Ridley Scott though. You'd have better luck gettin' a corndog away from Rosie O' Donnell. The man's reputation carries a lot of weight, even with Disney, I'd wager. They may humor him on one or two things like Alien, just so he'll do others for them in the future.
Exactly. I really hope this "Alien Awakening" never gets made tbh.
I don't blame Ridley Scott but the constraints of Studio & Fan expectations
Fancuts like the Chaos & Evanus editions demonstrate
that better films would have been achieved theatricallly by being half an hour longer. Hopefully we'll get a bumper Directors Cut trilogy when this is all done & dusted.
I am glad that David designed the Xenomorph per se, I know I'm in the minority but in regard of themes & protagonists in the Quadrilogy it makes linear sense.
I think it will be set up so creatures even more Alien than the Xenomorph have the potential to come into being via the black goo plot device, Making us in the long run have a soft spot for the Xenos coz they were created by an Android made & designed on Earth fighting against some aberration of the Engineers or beyond for many films to come to expand the Alien universe.
Okay I sort of found what I was talking about...
http://www.alien-covenant.com/topic/47179
This post references an Omega Underground article, but the Omega Underground website is gone now.
So if the Blu-ray.com post and Omega Underground article are to be believed, they were going to start pre-production in September of 2017, then roll cameras in the summer of 2018. This lines up with the "14 months" Ridley was talking about during the Covenant interviews. It is entirely possible that the script still had a long way to go by the time they pulled the plug, but I'm sure they had a rough outline.
And maybe you do not throw the cash out for facehugger animations and landscapes with panoramic view? Just focus on the important stuff for once. That's plot, Xeno and Space Jockey (for real, you can't give them the same look of Prometheus?
Why not Blomkamp? That could be good, for the Alien at least.
We're talking about the bigger stuff here though. Storage costs for things like clothing or a portrait wouldn't be an issue either way. If there's no sequel or reshoots planned, these smaller items (especially the so-called "hero props") often make their way to places like Propstore which help to defray the production costs a teensy bit.
Can't recall anything about a Fox production schedule but Ridley did say back in May 2017 that he will be filming the sequel in 14 months time. So that would probably have put it closer to September 2018 rather than September 2017.
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/2017/05/10/alien-covenant-2-start-shooting-14-months/
Nope! Not making that horrible fan service wet dream was the best decision Fox has made in a long time with this franchise.
It also helps that Covenant is pretty damn genuinely good.
I totally agree with this sentiment. "Prometheus", for all its faults, I still personally enjoy. But Covenant?
I bet Fox wish they had taken a chance on Blomkamp's direct Aliens sequel now. I would have rather seen Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop kicking ass again, than anything that Covenant offered. Ridley really dropped the ball with this
I dunno... ive worked in the art department on several features and it is just rather common place for the studio to keep certain things they deem potentially useful. It doesnt necessarily have to be used for sequels. Its a very strange process of elimination when a film wraps for the art department. I once watched a studio insist on keeping one of two portraits of Julia Roberts, made for a film... She asked for both, they gave her one and wanted to keep the other. Julia had contracted that she get to keep her wardrobe, and thenwhen she came to pick it up she tried to pick up the second portrait too. Her excuse? "what the hell are they gonnando with this other portrait of me in storage?" Reshoots had been completed. Not sure what ended up happening to that portrait, but Im currently typing this one my cellphone in the bed she shared in that film with a handsome costar... so none of what they keep or waste or give away and auction off really makes sense in any logical way. Im sure they may have been inclined to keep some stuff but it doesn't necessarily mean anything is solidly in the works. If they had dates to start shooting THAT does make sense.
I'm sort of happy that didnt materialize into a shooting script to be completely honest.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=14128165&postcount=1568
His profile claims he's Carl Braga, a guy with a handful of art department credits on IMDb, including Alien: Covenant.
I thought someone dug up a Fox production schedule that confirmed Covenant was slated to begin in that September as well... but that might have been proven fake. I can't find it now.
Movie props are usually destroyed right after filming since storage costs would be prohibitive. If the props were indeed put into storage then they must have already had a fixed date in mind with regards to filming the sequel.
That was one user on the Blu-ray.com forums. From what I remember, they claimed that Covenant 2 was about to start shooting the following September after Covenant's release. That's why they were saving the props before the box office results changed their plans. This is why I'd be surprised if the script wasn't at least being worked on by May if they planned to shoot in September.
He's already doing his "AI stuff" as "a separate thing" in the form of a new television series for TNT called Raised by Wolves. In fact, I'm pretty sure a lot of his ideas for Covenant II will find their way into his new show.
From what I've gleaned, certain Covenant props were put into storage in Sydney after they wrapped filming. However a report later (Hicks can you confirm?) surfaced saying those props were destroyed after Covenant's disappointing box office results. I also suspect Scott's agreement with the Aussie government was originally for a three film deal.
We could only hope... Until then Fox World in Malaysia will be the closest thing to an Alien theme park.