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Neill Blomkamp’s Alien project is go!
Other | Wednesday 4th March 2015 | Christina
Sci-fi genius Neill Blomkamp, director of District 9 and Elysium, is reviving the Alien franchise. Whilst working on new flick Chappie, Blomkamp found a spare ten minutes to knock together some pretty serious Alien concept art, post it up on Instagram, and get his Alien sequel project greenlit by 20th Century Fox.
Blomkamp plans to bring back Sigourney Weaver as Ripley (who you’ll remember died at the end of Alien 3 and returned as a human xenomorph clone in Alien: Resurrection) and Michael Biehn’s Hicks (who bit the dust between the second and third films). Weaver seems pretty keen to revisit the role of Ripley, saying “I would love to take Ripley out of sort of orbiting around in space and give a proper finish to what was such an excellent story”.
The sequel would tie in more with Alien and Aliens than the last two films, which can only be a good thing – those last two were not so hot. As Blomkamp said, “I want this film to feel like it is literally the genetic sibling of Aliens, so it’s Alien, Aliens, this movie.” He also implied that he would be revisiting the horror aspect of the series, “It’s a Freudian kind of nightmare. That element to me is what is so appealing, to try to put the audience on the edge of their seat the whole time in a traditional ‘monster stalking you/dark corridor’ way. And then when you mix in the life cycle and the design elements of the Alien, it’s just a powder-keg of creativity to me.”
Lots of film fans took this to mean that he would be completely ignoring Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection. But whilst promoting Chappie, Blomkamp clarified his comments, saying that he is not trying to undo the last two instalments, simply that Alien and Aliens are his favourites and he wants his project to be connected to those. Fans are wildly speculating about how Blomkamp will do it – how will the age of the characters be accounted for? And what about the time lapse between the films? Is an alternate timeline on the cards? And as Fox are committed to a Prometheus sequel, will the events in Blomkamp’s Alien have any bearing on Ridley Scott’s project?
So. Many. Questions.
