Alien: Covenant WAS first of 3 Prometheus sequels before 1979's Alien is explained

UPDATE: Unfortunately the original plans for Alien: Covenant were shelved at 20th Century Studios and instead the Alien story will expand in a new direction with Alien: Romulus. However, read on below for Ridley Scott's original plans for his Alien prequels...

During a press conference in Sydney, director Ridley Scott has confirmed that Alien: Covenant will be the first stage in an evolutionary new trilogy, spawning from Prometheus before events of the 1979 original Alien are finally explained. It seems Ridley is finally in the 'sequels' game, following the immense success the upcoming Star Wars trilogy will be receiving. Below is an excerpt of Scott's remakrs about Alien: Covenant thanks to THR:

“Its a very complex story. Its an evolution of what I first did with Prometheus 1,” he said of the new film, which tells the story of the crew of the colony ship Covenant, who discover 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.

“Prometheus 1 was borne out of my frustration that on Alien 1 in 1979 – I only did one as I don’t normally do sequels. I was amazed that in the 3 that followed  that no-one asked the question “why the Alien, who made it and why?” Very basic questions. So I came up with the notion of Prometheus 1, which starts to indicate who might have made it and where it came from.

So I’m now going to the next one, which is the next evolution directly connected with the first one, which was this Shaw, when he replaced Michael Fassbender in two pieces and we’ll kind of pick it up there and it will evolve. When that’s finished there’ll be another one and then another one which will gradually drive into the back entrance of the film in 1979.

Shooting will be  a mix of location and studio shoots with location requiting “monumental forest and monumental rock and the rest will be in the studio with fairly formidable CGI. The Martian was made for the most part 94 pecent in a Budapest studio. With green screen I now can’t tell what was studio and what was shot in Wadi Rum.”

Alien: Covenant begins filming in March and April of 2016 next year, with Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace both reprising their roles as David 8 and Shaw, though Noomi's role in this film will be small by comparison. We speculate her fate will be explained in more detail in the follow-up sequel to Covenant.