In early drafts for Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant, Elizabeth Shaw would had more screen time according to creature concept artist Carlos Huante, who provided some artwork for the movie, as he did for Prometheus. In a new interview, Huante goes into detail, discussing the early drafts of what was then called Paradise / Prometheus 2 and how the Shaw character was originally utilized:
In the first version of what was called Paradise/Prometheus 2, Shaw was alive. They find her and she’s been hiding from David the whole time and she helps them escape. I told Ridley my wife and mother-in-law, who are strong characters themselves, they loved the Shaw character and the actress (Noomi Rapace) more than any other characters in the film and they’re not science fiction people, but they liked the film because of Noomi. I think it was a studio call as to why she didn’t return. What a shame
So in the first version of Covenant called Paradise, she was hiding in the catacombs from David under the city and the story was that on her trip to the homeworld she got lonely and she had David hanging outside the ship, she didn’t want anything to do with him. But she still had to talk to him. Eventually, she ends up bringing his body in and reattaching him as they become friends during this trip. He ends up having affection for her in a friendship way.
So they end up going to the city and that’s when David looks at her and tells that story ‘Do you trust me, do you trust that I love you and everything I’m going to do from this point on is because of you and that’s all to protect you’…she looks at him and says ‘Okay, yes I do’ so then he turns around and kills all the Engineers on the planet. It’s his own twisted way of vengeance for her, he kills the planet. She is like ‘Hey, I wanted to talk to these people’ but too late the whole planet is polluted now and everyone on the planet dies.
He also goes on to discuss original plans for Prometheus and how early scripts for the Alien prequel were originally more like James Cameron's shoot-em-up Aliens, rather than Scott's 1979 original:
When we met, I had a script in my hand and it was not good. It would have been like Aliens, like an Aliens movie it wasn’t Alien it would have been an Aliens film. There was an army group there fighting aliens with all of them getting killed. It was a shoot ’em up bang-bang film with aliens in it. It was really bad but I knew that wasn’t going to be the script and Ridley had just gotten hired, the art department got hired on. I was living up in Northern California at the time. So they flew me down to meet with Ridley for a couple of days. And so I’m in the room with Ridley, I sit down and he starts telling me the story, the new script, and it’s way better. I mean that [previous] script I had read had nothing to do with what he was telling me.
Carlos provides some pretty neat insight to both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant throughout this interview. You can read the full interview over on HN Entertainment.
Banner artwork by the very talented Alex Kryvolapov (discovered by Ati in the forums).
The Alien: Romulus sequel is currently in development and cameras are set to roll by October, 2025! Be sure to bookmark the Alien: Romulus 2 Info Page for an up-to-date account of all available information, production updates and important details! You can also share any news & rumours we may have missed by starting your own discussion in our forums!
In addition to the upcoming Alien: Romulus sequel, we have the Alien: Earth TV series from Noah Hawley arriving this August and a rumoured Alien vs. Predator reboot in the works as well after it was revealed Weyland-Yutani play a key role in the upcoming Predator: Badlands movie! There's really never been a better time to be a fan of the Alien movies. Be sure to check out our image galleries for the latest images, posters, concept art and leaked materials for all these upcoming Alien projects!