Michael Fassbender Says Alien: Covenant’s Sets Are Fantastic

Filming is currently underway on Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, the director’s follow-up to Prometheus, and while we still know very little about it, a few details are beginning to trickle out.

For one, we know that Michael Fassbender’s android David will be the only returning character, as he’ll be surrounded by a cast of fresh new faces including Katherine Waterson, Danny McBride and Demian Bichir. We also know that the film will be going for a “hard R rating” and will be set 10 years after its predecessor.

All that aside though, and details are still thin on the ground. However, with production now underway, some of the cast members are starting to talk about what we can expect, and in a recent interview with Inquirer, Fassbender spoke a bit about the highly-anticipated sequel.

While he wouldn’t reveal much, the actor did say that we’ll be in for some great sets, which he likened to Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner.

“The sets are fantastic. Again, the most impressive sets I’ve seen since ‘Prometheus,’ which was the original setting. It’s a fantastic mixture of high-end technology and primitive elements. The way that I can explain it is the same way that Ridley did ‘Blade Runner.’”

Further in the interview, he commented on working with the legendary director, calling him an “absolute master.”

“It’s amazing to watch Ridley work. I try to soak up as much knowledge as I can from him, because having worked on this kind of films a few times and having seen how many moving parts there are, how many people work on the set and how many departments need attention and the language, he’s an absolute master.”

Unfortunately, there’s not much here to sink our teeth into. The comparisons to Blade Runner are nice to hear though and it sounds like one of the major complaints lodged against Prometheus (how the film dealt with tech) will be addressed through the set design.

Of course, this still doesn’t give us a ton of confidence that Scott’s follow-up will rectify all the mistakes that his 2012 effort made. Prometheus was an extremely divisive movie that had a number of problems. We’re willing to remain cautiously optimistic about the sequel, but until we learn a bit more, we’ll still have our hesitations.

Alien: Covenant will descend into theatres on August 4th, 2017.