It’s been a mere nine days since Fox formally confirmed that Chappie director Neill Blomkamp would helm a new sequel in the Alien franchise, but for the Internet, nine days is a lifetime. In the time that has lapsed between the initial announcement and now, speculation has been rife about whether Blomkamp’s rendition would disregard some of the series lore — namely Alien 3 and Resurrection — but during a recent interview with AlloCine, the South African filmmaker assured fans that this simply isn’t the case.
Rather than out-and-out ignoring the two divisive installments, Blomkamp stressed that he wants his upcoming sequel to connect more with the original 1979 classic and James Cameron’s more action-heavy sequel, Aliens. In fact, this innate connection had already been alluded to through the original artwork that appeared on the director’s Instagram, which included depictions of Ripley and a badly scarred Corporal Dwayne Hicks.
How exactly these characters will weave their way into Blomkamp’s story remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, the director isn’t setting out to undo the groundwork laid by Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection.
My favorites are the first two movies, so I want to make a film that’s connected to Alien and Aliens. That’s my goal. I’m not trying to undo Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection, I just want it to be connected to Alien 1 and 2.
Work on Blomkamp’s new-fangled Alien sequel is still very much in the early stages, and it’s likely that we’ll see it slither onto the silver screen some time in 2016, at the earliest. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Alien 3 is a prime example of a rushed production crippled by studio interference — one which almost forced David Fincher into what would have been a tragic early retirement — so more than anything, Blomkamp deserves time at the helm as he takes the long-running franchise in his own direction.
