The internet became a buzz recently when Empire Magazine asked director Ridley Scott if they could find a way to use a de-aged version of Sigourney Weaver‘s Ripley in future Alien films. Scott’s polite response was ” you could do that”. A non-committal answer but this didn’t stop sites from rushing to assume this was actually happening.
Ridley has teased the films would line up with Alien eventually but nothing says this means Ripley is involved. As it likely will just tackle why the engineer ship crashed on LV-426 and who might have set up the warning beacon.
Scott has no intention of bringing back Sigourney Weaver let along de-aging her for his upcoming sequels.
His next installment in the franchise with the working title Alien: Awakening is set between the events of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant which will bring back Noomi Rapace‘s Shaw. The plan seems to be to finish the second film original intended as the direct sequel to Prometheus.
“There will be another one before we kind of literally and logically, clockwise, back into the rear back head of [the original] Alien.”
“It will go Prometheus, Awakening, Covenant.. fairly integral where this colonization ship is on the way….”
Michael Fassbender‘s David is essentially the Ripley of these films now and is expected to play a significant role in future movies.
It should be noted that even if they went to make a direct sequel to Covenant, Ripley still hasn’t even been born or even a part of the Nostromo crew in the timeline. Common sense would suggest throwing Ellen Ripley into these movies doesn’t even make much sense.
It sounded like John Logan’s ten page sysnopsis was being put together for the third sequel, which might be how Covenant and Alien connect.
Scott has Katherine Waterston‘s Daniels and Shaw (his Ripley replacements), so there’s really no reason to bring back Ripley for these films. Something that will likely make franchise producers happy, who have been trying to bounce Weaver from the franchise since the development of Aliens.
The de-aging process is still wonky and looks terrible, Rogue One’s scenes looked jarring and the uncanny valley sort of ruined them. There’s really no point story-wise to bring in a young Ellen Ripley to begin with.
There’s only one project that would see Weaver welcome a return to the role and that was Neill Blomkamp‘s Alien 5. A project Ridley jumped on as a producer only to help shelve it, having his own movies pushed ahead which kind of pissed off both Sigourney and Neill. Ridley putting Covenant into production caused a massive delay for Alien 5 just before it was set to begin its own pre-production in Vancouver.
The idea was to make a film that allowed the return of Hicks and Newt.
Since then, Weaver has returned to the Avatar franchise for multiple sequels and will be tied up for years. Blomkamp seems to be under the impression the film has been axed, and I think we know who we can thank or blame for it. This would lead us to believe Scott has zero intention to bring back Weaver for his films.
Again, I don’t see how a younger Ripley would even fit into these movies unless they just tried to make a feature adaptation of Alien: Isolation. A survival video game where you play Ellen’s daughter Amanda Ripley trapped on a massive space station with the xenomorph that Ripley shot out into space trying to piece together the mystery of her mother’s disappearance via the flight recorder. That story might be worth telling but doesn’t require Weaver in the role.
I personally think Scott was just trying to be polite to this interviewer and wasn’t making any bold confirmation that is their actual intention.