While Alien: Covenant has wrapped filming and has currently entered post-production, Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 remains in limbo. During the Comic-Con Q&A session with the cast of Aliens yesterday, director James Cameron made a point of touching on Blomkamp's ideas with Alien 5 and gave his honest opinion about where he thinks the story should go.
Simply put, Cameron is all for Neill's vision of Alien 5 - adding that he thought killing off Hicks and Newt in Alien 3 was not only a "bad idea", but that he felt it was a "slap in the face" to fans of the franchise.
I think it works gangbusters. He shared it with me, and I think it’s a very strong script and he could go make it tomorrow. I don’t know anything about the production, and I don’t know what Ridley [Scott]’s doing. But hopefully there’ll be room for both of them. Like parallel universes.
I thought [the decision to eliminate Newt, Hicks, and Bishop] was dumb. I thought it was a huge slap in the face to the fans. [Alien 3 director] David Fincher is a friend of mine, and he’s an amazing filmmaker, unquestionably. That was kind of his first big gig, and he was getting vectored around by the studio, and he dropped into the production late, and they had a horrible script, and they were re-writing it on the fly. It was just a mess. I think it was a big mistake. Certainly, had we been involved we would not have done that, because we felt we earned something with the audience for those characters.
For those unaware, from what we've heard so far, Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 is set to take place after the events of Aliens, but before the events of both Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection - essentially ignoring their stories entirely and running alongside a parallel cinematic universe. Newt, Hicks and Ripley are all said to return and the story will primarily focus on Newt obtaining the mantle from Ripley as the series' new heroine.
Although Alien 5 was placed on hold while Fox focus efforts on Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant, rest assured Alien 5 is very much a topic of interest for them. Various concept artists have been hired already to pen concepts and storyboards for the film. The matter of Alien 5's existence is not a matter of IF, but a matter of WHEN. Assuming Alien: Covenant performs well, Fox will likely begin work on Alien 5 as early as next year, once Covenant is prepared for its August release date. As always, however as news continues to surface, we'll be sure to keep you posted!
Don't forget to subscribe to our Alien 5 blog for instant updates sent directly to your e-mail inbox!
Thanks to io9 for the transcript!
Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 project was inevitably canceled following the merger between 20th Century Fox and Disney. Blomkamp had hoped to revive characters Hicks and Ripley for a new film, rewriting the Alien timeline, chalking up Alien 3 and Resurrection to mere bad dreams. Studio executives decided to can the project and instead took the franchise in a new direction, tapping Fede Alvarez to direct Alien: Romulus.
Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 is indefinitely shelved.