So far, the only Alien project that’s officially in active development is the recently announced FX on Hulu series that’s being shepherded by the team of Ridley Scott and Noah Hawley. All we know is that it’ll be the first entry to be set on Earth, which instantly presents a whole host of fresh storytelling opportunities, and over the years, Scott and Hawley have both proven themselves more than capable of putting interesting spins on familiar genres.
However, the rumor mill has continued to churn lately surrounding the theatrical arm of the sci-fi franchise. The last concrete update we had from Scott himself came back in September when the Alien, Prometheus and Covenant director revealed that another new movie was in the works, but it hasn’t been made clear whether he’s still planning to make it, or if the TV show has taken precedence.
In the interim, though, insider Daniel Richtman has claimed that there are countless feature film and television projects on the table at 20th Century Studios including, but not limited to, an Alien vs. Predator limited series, a PG-13 Disney Plus show, a new adventure spearheaded by James Cameron, another Ridley Scott effort not connected to his previous pair of prequels and a young Ripley story that may or may not be the same thing as the other Ripley-centric effort that he reported Sigourney Weaver was being eyed for.
The latest from the tipster is that the next Alien movie will be similar to Cameron’s Aliens and have an epic scale. It isn’t quite clear if those two statements are connected, though, because The Terminator director’s balls to the wall actioner was a claustrophobic and largely self-contained thriller made for a relatively thrifty $18.5 million, which is still only a little over $43 million when adjusted for inflation and hardly epic by today’s standards. That being said, it’s still one of the greatest action movies in Hollywood history, so there are far worse places to draw inspiration from.
