I'm worried that the franchise is in trouble and I'm pretty split on where it should go next. It has always belonged to Fox. But from another perspective, there were only two overwhelmingly loved movies and the last one was in 1986!
I like Covenant but it did have so many problems. The worst part for me is that Ridley has no real plan, he's abandoning ideas left and right that he himself introduced. Yes, I wanted an Alien movie and it would have been awesome if Prometheus had an Alien that was well written in, but okay. It wasn't necessary or a problem. What we got were questions about the Engineers. Lets learn more about them. And the idea was completely thrown away! There was not enough of a payoff from Prometheus. Even though I really like David and have nothing against him creating the Alien, for I love the idea of a sick, sexually frustrated robot which was created by an arrogant genius who made him too human like and now the twisted creation is creating nightmares for us humans, I'm still disappointed in the execution.
Anyway, with whoever it is to blame on the changing of direction for Covenant, be it Fox (probably) or Ridley (who doesn't care enough anymore), we need a better approach and change. I'd like for Scott to wrap this all up with one more movie and leave the franchise be, as many have stated before me. But after that it could be possible that Fox puts the franchise on ice which I wouldn't like. But if Disney gets the right, they could even maybe ignore the whole franchise which is even worse.
I would love if Fox could get the franchise back on track but the Box Office for Blade Runner 2049 is also worrying. There may be a lack of interest for mature Sci-Fi anymore...
I'm afraid of Disney getting the rights if they don't care about the franchise, but knowing how successful they are, if they want to continue it, I'd like to see what they come up with.
It's sad to hear no games being developed and no comics (as of now) after Dead Orbit. I'm looking more forward to the new Titan books and regular Neca releases than the movies, which is not encouraging. Maybe it's time for a Disney Alien?