If Michael Fassbender isn’t gushing about the production design of Alien: Covenant – it’s seemingly fantastic – you’ll likely find the actor championing just how scary Ridley Scott’s sequel is shaping up to be.
That’s something that Fassbender echoed during a recent interview with Collider, where the so-hot-right-now star touched base on everything from The Light Between Oceans to his lead role in Justin Kurzel’s live-action Assassin’s Creed movie.
When pressed on Alien: Covenant, though, Fassbender began by lauding Ridley Scott’s creative process.
I just love Ridley. You know, he’s become a really good friend, and he’s just a natural, he’s one of a kind. Anybody that works with him in any department is just totally blown away by him. He’s such a visionary and I think he has such a great understanding of storytelling. You know, coming from an art background, how referring to something being put in the frame, working with the art department, working with costume design, working with the actors, he’s very vigilant and fun, you know? We have a lot of fun; we laugh a lot, and he’s also got very intelligent but also off-center notes. He would never tell you directly to do something, but just give you little flavors.
When it comes to the movie itself, Fassbender has made no bones about Alien: Covenant’s scare factor in the past, and though he fails to elaborate here, the actor does touch base on the sequel’s “massive scope.”
As phase two of Ridley Scott’s prequel trilogy, it’s not all that surprising that the esteemed filmmaker is dreaming big with Covenant. Whether that’s a vision that will span more than three films is still up for question, but Scott has long expressed his desire to dovetail this burgeoning arc with the lore of the original Alien, bringing his sci-fi horror franchise full circle.
In the first Prometheus film, he just sort of walked over, and [said,] “I imagine David’s like a butler” and he runs his finger over the desktop checking for dust. And that was enough for me to go off and explore elements of the character with that in mind. We work really well together. I have to say, this Alien is going to be – I’m really excited to see it and everybody in the film was saying that there’s a film that we all wanna see. It’s much scarier than Prometheus, but it’s got that sort of same scope as Prometheus, that eminent sort of disaster feel, that Alien had. So it’s kind of a beautiful meeting of both of those films. I’m really excited to see it, I think it’s gonna be super scary, number one. And again, with the massive scope of Prometheus.
Alien: Covenant is due to descend into theaters on August 6, 2017, when Fassbender’s unnerving synthetic will be flanked by Billy Crudup, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Katherine Waterston and Amy Seimetz. Long before shooting for the far reaches of space, we can look forward to the actor headlining a very different tentpole when Assassin’s Creed bows this December.
