Ridley Scott Says He Is Through With Alien Franchise

Ridley Scott broke new ground in sci-fi horror when Alien hit cinemas in 1979. Though largely absent from the universe until 2012’s Prometheus, the franchise has seen incredible highs (1986’s Aliens) and massive lows (1992’s Alien 3 and 1997’s Alien: Resurrection). Now it appears Scott is moving on from the beloved property.

Speaking to ScreenRant to promote the 20th-anniversary edition of Kingdom of Heaven on 4K disc, Scott reflected on his time with the Alien films and why he decided to finally step away.

“I think I felt it was deadened after 4. I think mine was pretty damn good, and I think Jim’s [James Cameron] was good, and I have to say the rest were not very good. And I thought, ‘F—, that’s the end of a franchise which should be as important as bloody Star Trek or Star Wars’…”

“A number of years after, I said, ‘I’m going to resurrect this,’ [and wrote] ‘Prometheus’ from scratch – a blank sheet of paper. Damon Lindelof and I sat then hammered out ‘Prometheus’. It was very present and very welcome. The audience really wanted more.”

There is no denying after Cameron’s blockbuster sequel that the franchise never found its footing. Studio politics damaged the Alien franchise no differently than the various rights holders of Terminator following T2. To Scott’s credit, he attempted to recapture the quality of the original film, Prometheus, as a prequel set decades before the Nostromo crew encountered the exomoon LV-426. While it had stunning visuals, audiences were divided on the change in direction from xenomorphs to the space engineer.

Following Prometheus, Scott returned to the director’s chair for Alien: Convent in 2017. That too did tepid box office with a slightly positive critical reception. But the Scott-produced Alien: Romulus in 2024 was received as a breath of fresh air for the franchise under Fede Álvarez’s direction. In that sense, Scott hopes the universe of Alien can move on just fine without him.

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“I said, ‘It needs to fly.’ No one was coming for it, [and] I went once again [and made] Alien Covenant, and it worked too. Where it’s going now, I think I’ve done enough, and I just hope it goes further.”

The franchise is indeed set to go further when it hits the small screen this July with FX’s Alien: Earth. Set in the year 2092, the series will take place around the Prometheus era and decades before the 1979 classic. Produced by Scott and starring Sydney Chandler, the cast includes Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, and Essie Davis. The official logline reads: “When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat”.

Are you going to miss Scott directing more Alien films? Let us know in the comments.

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