We've known that Ridley Scott has had further sequels to PROMETHEUS planned for some time, the first of which will be the upcoming ALIEN: COVENANT, but it seems that the next sequel will come along a little sooner than we had thought. At the end of a set-visit report from the Sydney Morning Herald, Scott revealed that the next installment of the ALIEN franchise has already been written as he's "ready to keep advancing the saga."
You've got to assume to a certain extent success and from that you'd better be ready. You don't want a two-year gap. So I'll be ready to go again next year.
Scott likes to move quickly, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that he already knows where the next ALIEN film, and perhaps beyond, will be going. Whether or not we actually get to see this sequel will likely hinge on how ALIEN: COVENANT performs in theaters, but it'd probably be foolish to bet against it. Make sure to check out JoBlo.com's own set-visit reports, in which we reveal everything we learned about the film, as well as our two-part interview with Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Demian Bichir, Ridley Scott and more.
I was one of those ALIEN fans who bought into the PROMETHEUS hype with perhaps a little too much intensity, so by the time the film was finally released to theaters, there was almost no way that it wouldn't disappoint. At the end of the day, I was still able to enjoy PROMETHEUS for what it was, warts and all, but I've been careful not to let myself get too excited about ALIEN: COVENANT. That said, should ALIEN: COVENANT satisfy, I'd be more than thrilled to see Ridley Scott return to the franchise once again.
The official synopsis for ALIEN: COVENANT:
Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. 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 (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
ALIEN: COVENANT will hit theaters on May 19, 2017.