Once upon a time Chappie and District 9 director Neil Blomkamp was this close to making a direct sequel to Aliens.
It wasn’t that long ago that South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp was sitting at the top of the genre heap following the success of his debut film, District 9, and many, many projects were being bandied about for him to helm.
One of the most exciting was teased by Blomkamp himself in early 2015: a direct sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens that would pick up the continuing adventures of Sigourney Weaver‘s Ripley, Michael Biehn’s Hicks, and Carrie Henn’s Newt by pointedly ignoring Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection. This got quite a lot of fan attention, as folks are fond of the idea of jettisoning whole swathes of canon that doesn’t make the grade: look at the entire Halloween and Terminator franchises for prime examples.
But it was all for naught as OG Alien director Ridley Scott put the kibosh on the project in favour of his own prequel, Prometheus. Ironically enough, Prometheus and its sequel, Alien: Covenant, are on shaky canonical ground these days, but that was that for Blomkamp’s take, which was provisionally titled Alien: Awakening.
However, exhaustive fan site AVP Galaxy has reported that Sigourney Weaver spilled a little tea on the fate of Alien: Awakening after a special screening of Alien in Paris on November 7. During a one hour masterclass titled A Lesson In Cinema, Weaver fielded a question from an audience member regarding the fate of the film, and had a few thing to say.
“Yes. Well, I think like many of us, I was a big admirer of Neill [Blomkamp]. His movie was so striking and I worked with him on a movie called [Chappie]. And I loved working with Neil and he had this idea of bringing Ripley and Newt back.
“It was a wonderful script and unfortunately, it was at that point I think that Ridley Scott decided to be very possessive about the series and really drilled down on his prequels.
“And so I think it was a disaster for that project. We were never able to… I think Neil in fact just gave up and he’s so talented. I wish him all the best.”
This comes on the heels of Weaver praising an unproduced Alien sequel screenplay by series producer Walter Hill a few weeks back. It seems that Weaver is more than open to returning to her most iconic role.
She also had some compliments for the recent Alien: Earth series, saying, “I loved Alien: Earth. I thought it was remarkable. So interesting, terrifying about our world and yet you could understand… you can imagine a world where each tech bro owns a planet. You know, it’s not that far from where America is now. So, I’m glad to see that Alien has legs, as they say, in the business. And I think it’s a very interesting time for the series.”
You can watch the entire masterclass here:
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