While Fox focuses on making Riley Scott’s Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant a hot ticket item, new details concerning Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5 have emerged via actor Michael Biehn.
Speaking to Icons of Fright (via ThePlaylist), Biehn revealed that the film would indeed ignore the events of Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, as both Newt and Hicks are expected to return. Having Ripley potentially pass the torch to a now twenty seven year-old Newt.
“The basic idea is acting like ‘Alient’ 3 and 4 never existed….I know Ridley Scott is doing his movie first and is going to be the executive producer on this one, so I’m really looking forward to that. I know that Ridley’s focus is on [‘Alien: Covenant’] and I’m sure that he and Fox both don’t want that and Neill’s movie to come out right next to each other, because they’re kind of two different worlds, with ‘Aliens’ taking place thousands of years later, which is how they explained it all to me, but at the same time, they want to give them a similar feel,” he explained. “I know they’re putting the brakes on Neill’s movie just for a little while, but I really think that it would be embarrassing to Ridley and Fox and Sigourney [Weaver] if they just didn’t make the movie.”
“They’re planning on bringing me and Newt back and at this point Newt will be around twenty-seven years old,” Biehn said. “I know that every actress in Hollywood is going to want to play this one, it’s really a passing of the torch between Sigourney and this younger actress who would play Newt. It would keep the franchise alive and the studios would make money, because that’s what the bottom line is now: money. That’s why you end up seeing ‘Terminator’ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10 and ‘The Fast And Furious’ 7, 8, 9, and 10.”
The idea of Hicks returning has been around for a while now via concept art posted by Blomkamp, but it’s the first real talk that Newt is coming back. As it stands, the film is still happening but the main focus is the Prometheus sequel, which makes sense as Ripley returning would obviously overshadow any other Alien universe project.
The original plan for James Cameron’s Alien 3 was to actually place the new patch-work family into harms way, but Fox got impatient and moved forward killing-off the two characters in the introduction. Pissing-off James Cameron in the process, who after that decided never direct any Alien films again.
We’ve actually been hearing for a while now from our own sources that it’s Fox’s plan to possibly give a new female lead the keys to the Alien saga, but we weren’t sure if it was going to indeed be Newt or a brand new character created for Alien 5. Something that has been suggested by us, and fandom alike.
Some online suggestions I’ve seen making the rounds includes Emma Stone (Birdman, Zombieland) and British actress Juno Temple (The Dark Knight, Sin City A Dame To Kill For, Maleficent, Horns), who obviously have the look and might be able to mimic Newt’s funky British-American hybrid accent from Aliens.
I think Stone being an Oscar nominee and more recognizable might help her chances a lot, hiring a more obscure actress might be harder sell to the studio after the unknown Noomi Rapace was cast in Prometheus, who is oddly missing from the Alien: Covenant press release.
Who would you like to see play Newt in Alien 5?
SOURCE: ICONS OF FRIGHT