Ridley Scott openly admitted that he is taking inspiration from the ever-expanding ‘Star Wars’ franchise and channeling that into the ‘Alien’ franchise, which he kick started with his ground-breaking 1979 original film.  But Scott is somewhat frustrated with the follow-up films and what he perceives as a lack of scope.  He hinted at a larger vision with his modestly successful 2012 prequel ‘Prometheus’ but plans to push even further with a new trilogy. One new prequel/sequel ‘Alien: Covenant’ (formerly ‘Alien: Paradise Lost’) was already known to be in the works, but now Scott has announced that after ‘Covenant’ he hopes to direct two more films that take place before the original ‘Alien’.

These new films, he explained were:

“… borne out of my frustration that on Alien 1 in 1979… I was amazed that in the 3 that followed  that no-one asked the question “why the Alien, who made it and why?”

‘Prometheus’ sort of answered that, with the introduction to the Engineers, towering aliens who apparently created the toothy Xenomorph aliens that plagued Sigourney Weaver and company in the previous films.  But according to Scott himself, that film still left unanswered questions.

“Why was this space jockey [on the uncharted planetoid] and why did he have an Alien inside him?”

“So I’m now going to the next one, which is the next evolution directly connected with the first one, which was this Shaw, when he replaced Michael Fassbender in two pieces and we’ll kind of pick it up there and it will evolve. When that’s finished there’ll be another one and then another one which will gradually drive into the back entrance of the film in 1979.”

Fassbender’s David may prove to be an important figure, but Scott revealed that Noomi Repace’s character, Elizabeth Shaw only has a minor role in ‘Covenant’.

Scott is currently in Australia in pre-production on ‘Covenant’ and hopes to shoot the two following movies there as well.

While Scott is fleshing out the backstory of the ‘Alien’ universe, Neill Blomkamp is still tentatively attached to direct a movie set in the franchise’s future with Michael Biehn returning as Hicks with a hot young female lead stepping in as a grown-up Newt.

The unanswered question now is, are audiences invested enough for a ‘Star Wars’-esque saga consisting of multiple trilogies and stand-alone movies (which is apparently what ‘Prometheus’ is now)?

Are you interested in the origin of the Xenomorph aliens?  Are you interested enough to invest in three movies to learn the secret?

Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

Alien: Covenant’ is scheduled for release on October 6, 2017.

Source: Screen Rant