Here's a bit of a "bad news, good news" situation.
A couple weeks ago, we heard that writer/director Adam Sonnet was developing a fan film called ALIEN IDENTITY that would star Elle Viane Sonnet as Rebecca "Newt" Jorden, a fan favorite character from James Cameron's ALIENS, and co-star the actress who originated the role of Newt in the 1986 film, Carrie Henn. Playing Newt as a child was Henn's first and only acting job, but she was set to make her return to the screen after nearly thirty years to play Newt's mother in a flashback.
If you were looking forward to ALIEN IDENTITY, here's the bad news: plans to continue the story of Newt have been abandoned after 20th Century Fox delivered a cease and desist order to Sonnet Realm Films.
The good news: Sonnet Realm hasn't scrapped things entirely, instead choosing to take the elements they had in place for the fan film and move them over to an original film called TRIBORN, keeping the cast in place and pitting them against all-new alien creatures designed by PROMETHEUS concept artist Neville Page. Carrie Henn won't be going back to the world of ALIENS, but she will still be returning to the acting world with TRIBORN.
Adam Sonnet had this to say about the situation –
"When we decided to make this Alien tribute film we anticipated from the beginning that this could happen. We were hoping that since Fox allowed other fan films in the Alien/Predator universes to be made that they would allow us to do so likewise. Although we wanted to make a tribute film spin off in the Alien universe reuniting original cast members to play new roles, we understand that this is Fox's intellectual property and we want to respect their wishes. Therefore we peacefully withdraw from any further production of ALIEN IDENTITY, and will pursue our own original content, which I think is best anyway. We realize some of the fans will be disappointed by this, but we are happy that our talent from the tribute film will be coming on board taking the roles of original characters in our other Sci-Fi adventure TRIBORN, that we’ve been developing. We thank all the fans for their support and invite them to join us on another adventure."
The cease and desist order could have been a blessing in disguise. Original projects are really the best way to go, options are limited with fan films and the filmmakers aren't allowed to profit off of them. With TRIBORN, Sonnet Realm Films will have a better opportunity to get their work out into the world, and they might even be able to make some money in the process.
Elle Viane Sonnet