Alien and Planet of the Apes franchises will continue at Disney

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

20th Century Fox is now officially owned by Disney, and Disney chairman Alan Horn was joined on stage during a CinemaCon panel by Fox vice chair Emma Watts to discuss how this merging of the studios is going to work. During the panel, a couple rumors we had heard in recent weeks seem to have been confirmed.

We had heard that Disney was interested in producing more installments in Fox's PLANET OF THE APES franchise, and that franchise was mentioned as one that will be continuing now that the acquisition of Fox has gone through.

We also heard that Ridley Scott's production company Scott Free is still working on a follow-up to the ALIEN prequel films PROMETHEUS and ALIEN: COVENANT. Watts didn't confirm that Scott is working on a new ALIEN movie during the CinemaCon panel, but she did list ALIEN as one of the Fox franchises she feels "still have life in them".

A lot of ALIEN fans had felt that Disney's acquisition of Fox had added a ticking clock element to the development of a new ALIEN film – if one couldn't get into production before Disney took over, would we ever see another ALIEN movie at all? But apparently there wasn't anything to worry about. ALIEN will live on at Fox, even now that it's part of Disney.

Five years passed between the releases of PROMETHEUS and ALIEN: COVENANT, so if Scott is able to get another movie made to complete his prequel trilogy we might be looking at a similar gap between COVENANT and whatever follows it.

Other franchises that Fox is interested in continuing include KINGSMAN, MAZE RUNNER, and James Cameron's AVATAR films, which have already gone into production.