Ridley Scott Has High Praise For New ‘Alien’ Movie

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(Left) Director Ridley Scott on the set of ‘Black Hawk Down.’ Photo: Oscars.com. (Right) A scene from 2012’s ‘Prometheus.’

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Director Fede Alvarez has been working on a new ‘Alien’ movie for release next year.
Original ‘Alien’ director Ridley Scott, who’s also producing, has seen it and declared it “great.”
The new film from Alvarez, director of ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Don’t Breathe,’ is said to be a standalone story.

If you’re filmmaker Fede Álvarez, you’re feeling pretty good right about now.

The Uruguayan-born writer and director of the 2013 ‘Evil Dead’ remake and 2016’s sleeper horror hit ‘Don’t Breathe’ has been quietly toiling away on a new ‘Alien’ movie for 20th Century Studios, but little has been heard about it since it was first announced in early 2022.

Speaking with Guillermo del Toro at the DGA Latino Summit 2023 (via Deadline), Alvarez noted that he has shown the movie, titled ‘Alien: Romulus,’ to legendary director Ridley Scott, who’s a producer on the film.

What Ridley Scott said about ‘Alien: Romulus’

Ridley Scott on the set of 1979’s ‘Alien.’

Scott was of course also behind the camera for the original ‘Alien’ and two later entries in the series, ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Alien: Covenant.’ His reaction to the new film?

According to Alvarez:

“…he did say, ‘Fede, what can I say? It’s f***ing great.’ For me, it was like… My family knows it was one of the best moments of my life to have a master like him, whom I admired so much, to even watch a movie I made, but particularly something like this… and talk to me for an hour about what he liked about it.”

Alvarez noted that Scott is notoriously tough on films, both his own and those made by others, even apparently giving a “meh” to ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ the sequel to his late brother Tony Scott’s 1986 ‘Top Gun.’

The new movie, the first in the series since ‘Alien: Covenant,’ is said to feature a group of young colonists on a distant planet and is not connected to the previous eight entries in the franchise (including the two ‘Alien vs. Predator’ spinoffs).

The cast includes ‘Priscilla’ star Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, David Jonsson, Aileen Wu, and Spike Fearn, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

What has been happening with the ‘Alien’ franchise in recent years?

2012’s ‘Prometheus.’

‘Alien: Romulus’ will be the first film in the franchise since Disney acquired 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios) in 2019.

After seeing diminishing returns with the ‘Alien vs. Predator’ movies in the mid-2000s, the studio put the series on the back burner until Scott himself returned to direct 2012’s ‘Prometheus,’ a prequel set in the same universe as the previous ‘Alien’ films.

While ‘Prometheus’ wasn’t a box office blockbuster, it did well enough for Scott to keep going, helming ‘Alien: Covenant’ in 2017 and promising two more films for an entirely new trilogy.

But a tepid response from moviegoers to ‘Covenant,’ as well as the pending sale of the studio to the Mouse House, also put those plans – along with another proposed sequel by director Neill Blomkamp – on a seemingly permanent hold.

The only other activity since then, before the announcement of Alvarez’s film, has been the development of an ‘Alien’ TV series by Noah Hawley (‘Fargo,’ ‘Legion’), set decades before the first film and set to stream via FX on Hulu. Filming began this past summer but was halted by the SAG-AFTRA strike.

According to Variety, ‘Alien: Romulus’ was initially slated for a Hulu debut as well, but will now be released in theaters on August 18, 2024.