It feels more than a little strange to be writing about PROMETHEUS again after all this time. And yet here we are, dragging those old chest-burst Engineer skeletons out of the closet again.
Like a surprising number of films for me this year, PROMETHEUS is one about which I’m enormously conflicted as there were enough alternating moments of brilliance and absurdity for me to still be ambivalent about giving it another go in an attempt to resolve my complaints and concerns. Same thing with THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, but that’s for another time. Because what we have on hand is news about PARADISE, the sequel to PROMETHEUS. The film made more than enough money for Fox to plunge ahead with making a sequel – they just will be doing so without Damon Lindelof. Whether you like what he did or not, it cannot be denied that Lindelof knows his way around philosophy and devilishly enjoys layering meaning upon meaning in his work whenever he can. And whether doing so ultimately worked or not to your mind, I think there is a strong case to be made that Lindelof’s contribution to the script that became PROMETHEUS was for the better in the way it distinguished itself from other recent sci-fi on an intellectual level.
But if you’re not a fan of Lindelof or what he brought to Ridley Scott‘s table, never fear – “much to the delight of the fanboys,” as Lindelof puts it, he won’t be back for the sequel.
“I am not [involved]. Ridley [Scott] and I talked at great length during the story process of the first movie about what subsequent movies would be if Prometheus were to be successful. And I think that the movie ended in a very specific way that hinted at, or strongly implied that there were going to be continuing adventures worthy of writing stories. What those stories would be would not necessarily usurp or transcend the Alien franchise as we saw it because we know that the Nostromo hasn’t come along yet. So the idea was to set up a universe that… Is it a prequel? Okay. If that’s what we want to call it, sure. But the sequel to this movie is not Alien. The sequel to this movie is this other thing.
So Ridley and I talked about what that other thing might be, and he was excited about doing it. But then I think what ended up happening was that the movie came out, and there was a reaction to the movie. And I got really wrapped up in Trek, and really wrapped up in this movie that I’m producing and writing with Brad Bird. And I have a TV project that I was really passionate about. Ridley and I had a meeting after Prometheus came out where we started talking again about where this journey would go. And in that meeting I said to him, unfortunately, before he could ask me and go through the discomfort of whether he was going to ask me or not… It’s sort of like having a date where you’re letting the other person know, ‘I’m in another relationship.’ So I can’t tell you that he asked me and I said no. But I did communicate to him that I was working on these other things.
The thing about Prometheus was it was a rewrite. Jon Spaihts wrote a script and I rewrote it. And still it was a year of my life that I spent on Prometheus, kind of all in. The idea of building a sequel to it—from the ground up this time—with Ridley is tremendously exciting. But at the same time, I was like, ‘Well that’s probably going to be two years of my life.’ I can’t do what J.J. [Abrams] does. I don’t have the capability. I’m usually very single-minded creatively. I can only be working on one thing at a time. So I said to him, ‘I really don’t think I could start working on this movie until I do this other stuff. And I don’t know when the other stuff is going to be done.’ And he was like, ‘Well, okay, it’s not like I asked you anyways.’ He and I are on excellent terms and it was a dream come true to work with him. But much to the delight of all the fanboys, I don’t see myself being involved in Prometheus-er.”
So there you have it. While there’s no word yet on precisely when the sequel to PROMETHEUS might arrive, word seems to say that 2015 is a worthy bet to make.