1, 2, or 3 franchises: where do you stand on this?

[Traveler37]

Just before Resurrection came out there was significant buzz to consider an Alien 5 right away.  Critical and box office response knocked that on the head.  So they did nothing till they started looking at AvP. Before they started on that Cameron had been tossing around an Alien 5 story and spoken to Ridley about it, but then they heard AvP was going ahead so it never went anywhere and Jimbo went back to playing in submarines and Riddles continued working on whatever the hell 500 projects he had on the stove.

I never heard there was ever any intent to have Weaver in an AvP film, nor have a Ripley spin-off with no Aliens.

The stories I heard was that what was on the table was:
#1 Alein 5, directed by James Cameron.
#2 Ripley spin-off, life after fighting the xenomorph.
#3 Ridley Scott prequel.
#4 Alien vs. Predator, set after Resurrection and starig Sigourney as Ripley.

My understanding is that this was all "talk" until the studio decided on AVP. Sigourney didn't want to do it, so they reworked it into the finished movie we got in 2004.

[SM]

Ridley had long wanted to explore where the Aliens had come from.  Didn't necessarily mean in the format of a prequel. The concept goes back to Alien 3.  Pretty sure Harlin wanted to do either that or Aliens on Earth. A Ripley spin off or a Ripley AvP don't sound legit.

[Traveler37]

Ridley had long wanted to explore where the Aliens had come from.  Didn't necessarily mean in the format of a prequel. The concept goes back to Alien 3.  Pretty sure Harlin wanted to do either that or Aliens on Earth. A Ripley spin off or a Ripley AvP don't sound legit.

Maybe his idea was to explore origins in a sequel, and mixed memories = I swear it was gonna be a prequel? hah
I do know his whole pyramid thing survived into the first AVP before popping up proper in Prometheus.

[SM]

It was O'Bannon's pyramid thing.

[Traveler37]

It was O'Bannon's pyramid thing.

Thank you for that.