Prometheus was originally pitched as an Alien prequel that eventually became its own thing. While still part of the Alien universe, it has its own priorities that don’t involve a murderous alien monster with acidic blood.
It looks like director Ridley Scott may be tying the second Prometheus film more directly with the Alien universe, as he’s revealed the title for the next film to be Alien: Paradise Lost when interviewed by HeyUGuys. Check out the snippet of that interview below:
HeyUGuys was asking Scott to elaborate on his comments to the German movie site Filmfutter (via /Film) where he said the prequel franchise would dovetail into Alien. Scott responded that it would, just not yet. Here’s what he said:
Yes, but it won’t be in the next one. It will be in the one after this one or maybe even a fourth film before we get back into the ‘Alien’ franchise… The whole point of it is to explain the Alien franchise and to explain the how and why of the creation of the Alien itself. I always thought of the Alien as kind of a piece of bacterial warfare. I always thought that that original ship, which I call the Croissant, was a battleship, holding these biomechanoid creatures that were all about destruction.
I loved the visuals and the performances of Prometheus but felt the story was exceptionally uneven and I think the blame for that should be placed at Damon Lindelof’s feet. Hopefully the next one will be a much better story even if it doesn’t quite connect to Alien just yet.
What’s really interesting is that Scott is making good on creating a new off-shoot franchise with at least two, possibly three, sequels planned. I’m curious to see how much of his original plan of the Alien being used as some kind of “bacterial warfare.” I assume that’s a mistranslation from English to German and back to English, and the actual term they were looking for was biological warfare.
In Prometheus, the creation of an Alien like creature was accidental and created from the squid fetus, born of a human, and an Engineer. While it shares similarities with the Alien design, it may not lead to the Alien Queen or factor in at all in the long run.
There’s also a question of whether will tie into Neil Blomkamp’s Alien 5 project that Scott has insisted needs to come after Alien: Paradise Lost. If I were to guess, it may be because some of Blomkamp’s film may tie into Scott’s prequel, since both will have the Alien moniker, but that’s just speculation on my part.
Alien: Paradise Lost will begin shooting early next year, with a likely 2017 release.
Image: Fox