Alien: Covenant Star Michael Fassbender Has Surprising Answer About Franchise Future

If there’s a sequel to Prometheus and Alien: Covenant in the works, Michael Fassbender definitely wants to be a part of it. The actor spoke to Esquire last week about the biggest roles of his career, including playing the androids David 8 and Walter One in these Alien prequels. He said that he would gladly reprise the roles again, or apparently take any chance to work with director Ridley Scott. Sadly, the prospect of another movie in this series is looking slim, but as Alien: Romulus showed, there are always ways to add a synthetic character back into the story.

“I love working with Ridley, yeah,” Fassbender said when asked if he wanted to be part of a Covenant sequel. “It was such a great experience, he’s phenomenal, he’s such an inspiration. He does these big films — they’re so difficult to make — and he’s just… You know, he’s a master. He’s fantastic.”

This is great news coming from Fassbender, who has always been open to the idea of reprising his Alien role but has sometimes sounded more lukewarm about the idea. He was the only character to carry over from Prometheus to Covenant, and he would be essential to a third installment of the story.

[RELATED: How To Watch the Alien Movies in Order (Including Alien: Romulus)]

History of the Potential Covenant Sequel

Prometheus was released in 2012, and in 2015 Scott said that he hoped to turn it into a trilogy. Alien: Covenant premiered in 2017, and it was profitable at the box office but not as successful as Prometheus, and it got a very subdued response from critics. This seemed to slow interest in a trilogy — for the studio, fans, and even Scott.

In 2018, 20th Century Studios began pre-production on a screenplay with the working title Alien: Covenant 2, which would have featured Fassbender, Katherine Waterston and Danny McBride all reprising their roles. There were even some plot details reported at the time — the movie would have followed David to the planet LV-426, where the crew of the Nostromo found the xenomorph at the beginning of the first Alien movie. While trying to establish his own utopia there, David would be pursued by the Engineers.

The following year, Disney acquired 20th Century Studios, which seemed to be the biggest stumbling block for this sequel. At the time, the company said it was interested in creating “new stories” within the Alien franchise, and was reassessing plans for a sequel to Covenant due to the low box office returns. The latest reports from August of 2021 said again that the potential for a sequel to Covenant was uncertain at best.

Still, the formula established in Alien: Romulus is a good sign for Fassbender reprising his role. The movie used an image of the late Ian Holm to play an android named Rook, who was clearly the same model as Ash from the original Alien. We’ve already seen that Fassbender’s likeness has been used for multiple different synthetic characters, and we’ve also seen the resilience of David. Fassbender could reprise his role in all kinds of ways, whether we get a Covenant sequel or not.

Alien: Covenant is streaming now on Hulu. The latest in the franchise, Alien: Romulus, is streaming there as well.