There’s been a lot of information coming out recently concerning the sequel to Prometheus. I figured I should put together a collection of these tidbits, so here’s what we know so far about Alien: Covenant.
Ridley Scott is producing and directing the film, which he has stated would be the first in a new trilogy that would eventually connect these films to the original Alien. Originally, Alien: Origins aka Prometheus was envisioned as a two-part film that link-up with Alien, but I guess Ridley and Fox see a lot of potential with this other avenue.
The script was originally developed by Jack Pagln (Transcendence) and then was taken over by Michael Green (Wolverine 3, Blade Runner 2), who did major rewrites on it.
The Martian composer Harry Gregson-Williams (The Equalizer, Blackhat, Metal Gear Solid, Gone Baby Gone, Live By Night, The Martian, Kingdom of Heaven) confirmed he’ll be working on the film later in the year.
Shooting will take place soon in Australia at the Fox stages and rumored to possibly shoot in New Zealand for exterior shots.
Fox has slated the release date for August 4th, 2017.
Ridley confirmed that the xenomorphs will be finally returning, along with other potential new alien threats.
David the sole survivor of the Prometheus (the fate of Shaw is unknown) and has likely reached the engineers’ homeworld, which Scott refers to as Paradise.
The film’s title Covenant is not unlike Prometheus, and is named after the space ship featured. In the case of the sequel, it’s a colonist ship and this means more humans running around. They’ll be casting colonists, Covenant crew members, a couple Weyland executives, and possibly a military/mercenary force. It’s unknown if they’ll be casting actors as other synthetics or engineers.
The cast is growing day-by-day, but it currently features leads Michael Fassbender returning as David and Katherine Waterston (Fantastic Beasts, Inherent Vice) replacing Noom Rapace as the new female lead of the film.
Katherine recently co-starred with Fassbender in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs. We assume their interesting dynamic in that film was the reason for her casting, and it’s likely they’ll be our two main leads.
Three additional high-profile actors include Danny McBride (This Is The End), Demian Bichir (The Hateful Eight) and Billy Crudup (Watchmen, Spotlight). People are assuming they could have villainous intentions in the film.
My own speculation is that Danny could be playing a a company stooge, not unlike comedian Paul Reiser’s Burke in Aliens. I could see Billy playing either a another Weyland synthetic like David or possibly an engineer. Crudup gained a bunch of motion capture experience making Watchmen.
The rest of the cast includes Alex England, Jussie Smollett, Amy Seimetz, Carmen Ejogo and Callie Hernandez.
It’s expected that Ridley will be hiring a bunch of Aussie actors and background players for the production.
The talk is that adding a gaggle of colonists is to allow a bigger body-count. This might give fans a taste of the Hadley’s Hope xenomorph outbreak from Aliens, that we never saw. Another reason for the larger cast is to keep the films going for a couple more installments, having others returning other than David.
Will we see David experiment on the colonists?
Can we expect Weyland finding a way to get hold of the engineers’ terraforming technology and the xenomorphs?
We’ll keep you updated once we get more information.