Things get bloody in the latest Alien: Covenant tease

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

The more behind-the-scenes ALIEN: COVENANT images we get that are accompanied by a set of mysterious numbers, the more it becomes clear that this isn't some kind of countdown, as some have speculated. The numbers aren't counting down, they fluctuate. Right now, it seems likely that the numbers are a timestamp revealing the futuristic dates on which the pictures are meant to have been taken, as Arrow in the Head readers "icon" and "slimbo0330" have suggested.

If they are timestamps, that would mean the first two images – of the gun-toting people moving through a field (above) and the sleep pods – were taken at 10:05pm on December 5th and 1:01pm on December 6th of 2104. The third image, of an Engineer hallway, was taken at 6:56pm on December 8, 2104.

The latest image falls right in between the pods and the hallway. This one was taken at 10:46pm on December 7, 2104 – or 224612072104 – and something terrible has apparently just happened, because there is blood all over the place. The two pictures featured in this article are exactly the sort of imagery I want to see from a new installment in the ALIEN franchise.

ALIEN: COVENANT serves as both a sequel to PROMETHEUS and a prequel to the original ALIEN. Ridley Scott is directing the film from a screenplay by Michael Green, Jack Paglen, and John Logan. The 2104 timestamp would confirm that this is set ten years after the events of PROMETHEUS (and twenty years before ALIEN).

The synopsis: 

Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the "synthetic" David, survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

Katherine Waterson, Danny McBride, Benjamin Rigby, Demian Bichir, Jussie Smollett, Carmen Ejogo, Amy Seimetz, Callie Hernandez, Billy Crudup, Noomi Rapace, James Franco, Guy Pearce, and Michael Fassbender star.

ALIEN: COVENANT is set for release on May 19, 2017.