In lieu of a front page post -
Last week we reported on some new comments made by Ridley Scott and at the end of the article included a recent report from Omega Underground and a supporting tidbit we'd found about how Alien: Covenant 2 (aka Alien: Awakening) had initially been expected to start shooting next year. You can read the article here -
Sir Ridley Scott Thinks Alien Should Be On "Same Level For Fans as Star Trek and Star Wars"
Since we posted that most of the larger outlets have ran with that rumour and it's pretty much all over the internet now. Couple that with Neill Blomkamp renewing general interest in his Alien 5 pitch by posting new concept art and the Internet seems abuzz with the notion that Fox has cancelled Alien: Covenant's sequel and Blomkamp's is back on.
Since most of these reports are referring back to us for finding the Blu-ray.com forum post, we wanted to just offer some extra context and clarification. We hadn't made it a headline ourselves as it was unconfirmed. Thanks to AvPGalaxy member Biomechanoid, we know that Human Media's public profile gives his real name as Carl Braga who according to IMDB worked on Alien: Covenant as a screen graphics designer. So the odds of the comment genuinely coming from someone who worked on the film seems quite likely.
However, the post was made in September of 2017 and referred to pre-production being originally slated to begin that month. Also back in September, 20th Century Fox CEO Stacey Snider discussed the future of the Alien series saying that Alien: Covenant had been a disappointment but that "I trust Ridley [Scott] and Emma [Watts] to know the right story when they find it." Just a couple of months earlier, in July, reports also came out that Fox had been "reassessing" the extra movies that Scott had initially wanted to do.
What this seems to indicate is that whatever direction Sir Ridley Scott had been leaning in for the Covenant sequel was not the one that 20th Century Fox ultimately wanted to move forward in. As a result of the reassessment, the sequel in it's then current form was likely shelved while Scott and Watt's explored a different direction for the sequel.
Fox representatives hadn't been shy about how Alien: Covenant hadn't performed as well as expected. Producer Fred Baron had told the Sydney Morning Herald: "It got great reviews and was everything we set out for it to be, it just didn't hit the note at the box office. It will be a profitable film for the studio but whether there's another one [is uncertain]."
Since these reports of the apparent reassessment of the direction of future Alien films, Scott has certainly been happily talking about his current direction, that the films would be moving towards Artificial Intelligence (and presumably David) taking an even more central role in his prequel films which would seem to indicate he's still working away on the concept.
In the same article this rumour had been generated from, we also reported that Scott had said that "they're crazy if they don't. David is a fantastic villain. I love what (Michael Fassbender) did in Covenant. But it's f—ing hard, dude. We lifted Alien out of a ditch and made Prometheus."
Does that mean that a sequel to Alien: Covenant is guaranteed? Of course not. It would seem to be that it is definitely not a green-lit certainty at this point. But it also doesn't mean that a sequel has been cancelled as work seems to be being done on it still.
Some videos from the Alien YouTubers that I think are worth a watch and pretty on the mark.
