When fans learned that Disney would be acquiring the rights to a majority of 20th Century Fox’s characters, they were largely excited at the new storytelling opportunities this would present. More than a decade after the Marvel Cinematic Universe began, audiences would finally get to see characters like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men fight alongside the Avengers, to name an example of what this new acquisition could mean. Unfortunately, the status of other properties acquired by Disney were thrown into complications, leaving audiences to wonder about the fate of franchises like Alien. Co-creator of the franchise Ridley Scott recently detailed that he’s had conversations with Disney and knows that, for the series to continue, it would need to evolve.
“You get to the point when you say, ‘Okay, it’s dead in the water,’” Scott says of merely repeating the idea of the xenomorph endlessly to The Hollywood Reporter. “I think Alien vs. Predator was a daft idea. And I’m not sure it did very well or not, I don’t know. But it somehow brought down the beast. And I said to them, ‘Listen, you can resurrect this, but we have to go back to scratch and go to a prequel, if you like.’ So we go to Prometheus, which was not bad actually. But you know, there’s no alien in it, except the baby at the end that showed, itself, the possibility. I mean, it had the silhouette of an alien, right?”
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While fans were excited to see Scott return to the franchise for the first time for Prometheus, the horrors leaned more heavily on artificial intelligence than the recognizable monster, leading many fans to be disappointed. With Alien: Covenant, the familiar threat returned, yet the focus was still on the horrors of A.I.
“The alien [origin concept] is uniquely attached to Mother Nature,” Scott added. “It simply comes off a wood beetle that will lay eggs inside some unsuspecting insect. And in so doing, the form of the egg will become the host for this new creature. That’s hideous. But that was what it was. And you can’t keep repeating that because the joke gets boring.”
Having confirmed that talks have taken place between he and Disney, the filmmaker notes that the future of the franchise will rely on reinventing the concept yet again.
“Go on, leave that behind, and see where it can evolve,” he confessed. “So we’re looking where we’re going to evolve.”
No official plans have been announced for the series, though various reports have emerged that claim new TV series will be developed inspired by the property, which could be the evolution Scott is speaking of.
Stay tuned for details on the future of the Alien franchise.
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