A while back, we learned a couple of possible details concerning the delay on Neill Blomkmap’s Alien 5. New details concerning Alien: Covenant seemingly confirm our original report.
Production on Alien 5 almost came together last fall, but due to Covenant‘s rewrites and then taking studio priority, it looked like Blomkamp would have to wait longer leading to Weaver’s commitments to Avatar sequels and Neill’s next project The Gone World (script’s second draft completed recently) further delaying things.
One of the reasons behind the two productions butting-heads as we reported that the scripts had some similar beats.
Ridley Scott and Fox also didn’t want the return of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley to overshadow Scott’s Prometheus sequel’s release. Fair enough, as Scott had suggested a desire to complete another two films connected to Prometheus and Covenant.
Returning back to the script issues, we originally speculated that one of the similarities in the scripts was both films tackling xenomorph experimentation. While we might have misstepped by pointing towards Weyland Industries, it looks like Weyland’s David is the one in Covenant looking to play mad scientist.
It’s worth noting, our rumored details from that original report might be off as they were connected to earlier drafts before both screenwriters Michael Green and John Logan got involved with the project.
We were also told by a source at the time that Fassbender would be playing more than one robot in the film, which backed-up The Wrap’s original story. Fassbender himself confirmed he’ll be playing both David and new robot Walter in the film.
Recent set photos and plot details have confirmed that Michael Fassbender’s David will indeed be doing experiments with the “neomorphs” in the film, which introduces a new (but familiar) wave of alien creatures into the franchise. It’ll be interesting to see how different they’ll be visually to the normal xenomorph life-cycle, as set photos have revealed they look similar, but not exact.
There is plenty of evidence from writer-director Neill Blomkamp that Alien 5 was also going to tackle xenomorph experimentation as well. Not to mention our own source backing this up.
This official concept image dubbed “factory” by artist Geoffroy Thoorens, shows a warehouse sized room on space station. As one of the Engineer’s juggernaut ships housing xenomorph eggs has been discovered by the company.
Another piece of concept art titled “hunting” from the same artist features an alien queen running-a-muck at the same facility.
This would conclude that our original report was indeed on the money.
Weaver and James Cameron admitted during the Aliens panel at San Diego Comic-Con this summer that they’ve read Blomkamp’s script, Cameron calling it “very strong”.
We’re not completely sure the Alien 5 script has been finalized or if drastic changes have been made since last fall. Neill may have altered his script to separate itself from Covenant, it’s unclear at the moment to what extreme.