Alien fans recently got an exciting rumor about the Alien: Romulus sequel – but just as quickly as it popped up, it’s being corrected. Initially, the rumor was that Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez was planning to bring back Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in the next film, with de-aging visual effects being used to bring Weaver’s looks back to the age she was when filming Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens. Well, Fede Álvarez has killed any hope (or dread) of the franchise taking such a turn; the director posted a tweet that reads “Fun gossip. But not true at all.”
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The original source of this rumor was Daniel RPK, who is generally viewed as a reliable industry scooper. Since Álvarez’s post debunking the report, RPK has come back to clarify that his scoop was referring to a different Alien movie project that may be in development – one that is “similar to what Neill Blomkamp was trying to do.”
If you don’t recall, there was a period of time in the mid-2010s when District 9 and Elysium director Neill Blomkamp was working on an Alien movie that was tentatively referred to as “Alien 5.” That film would’ve been a direct sequel to Cameron’s Aliens, with Ripley (Weaver), Colonial Marine Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), and android officer Bishop (Lance Henriksen) all reprising their roles. De-aging VFX was going to be used to make the characters look as close to their Aliens ages and appearances as possible. Blomkamp’s project ended up ruffling the feathers of Ridley Scott and other executives at 20th Century Studios; a creative tug-of-war ended with the studio backing Scott, greenlighting his Prometheus sequel, Alien: Covenant. When Covenant only made $240 million worldwide on a budget of $100 million, it caused the studio to place the Alien franchise on the back-burner, with Blomkamp’s film being one of the first creative casualties.
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Neill Blomkamp made it clear in the early 2020s that he had moved on from any hopes of playing in the Alien universe. On the other hand: just last summer Sigourney Weaver was saying that it’s “not completely impossible” for her to make a return to the franchise. She would know, too: Weaver is currently re-teaming with James Cameron on the Avatar sequels, in which she is now playing the reincarnated spirit of her original scientist character, now living in the body of a teenaged Na’vi girl. If Weaver can do several movies in mo-cap pretending to be a teen again, shaving off some decades to play a younger Ripley should be a breeze – both performance and technology-wise.
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“I felt like [for] audiences who loved Aliens, there was an opportunity to do one more film with Sigourney in a way that may have satiated what people were looking for and what I think I was looking for,” Blomkamp previously said. “What doesn’t make sense is that I feel like it’s what the audience wanted so it’s strange because Fox would never really turn down money.”
The window to do Alien 5 is still open (Weaver, Biehn and Henriksen are all still with us), but the question is whether or not more of Ripley’s story is truly what audiences want, as Blomkamp claimed. Alien: Romulus just sold a whole new generation of fans on the Alien concept, and Álvarez has already teased heading into ‘uncharted territory’ with the sequel. 2025 will also mark the franchise’s first TV spinoff with FX’s Alien: Earth series from Noah Hawley (Fargo). With the kind of hype currently around Alien, moving forward may be the best way to go.
Alien: Romulus is streaming on Hulu-Disney+.
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