Ridley Scott Says Alien: Covenant Sequel Is in the Works

Ridley Scott says the long-unfinished story from Alien: Covenant may finally continue. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Scott is working on an Alien: Covenant sequel built around Michael Fassbender’s synthetic antagonist, David.

That is the exciting part. The necessary dose of cold-water realism is that 20th Century Studios has not announced a greenlight, production schedule, cast or release date. For now, this is a project in development—not a movie preparing to shoot.

ALIEN: COVENANT SEQUEL would return to David

Scott introduced David in 2012’s Prometheus and pushed the character to the center of 2017’s Alien: Covenant. Fassbender’s performance became the connective tissue between the prequels’ questions about creation, artificial intelligence and the origins of the franchise’s most famous monster.

Covenant left that thread deliberately unresolved. A new film centered on David would give Scott room to complete the arc instead of leaving it suspended between the prequel films and 1979’s Alien.

This is separate from the other Alien projects

The proposed Covenant follow-up should not be confused with the separate sequel to Alien: Romulus or the television side of the franchise. Multiple Alien projects can exist at once, but Scott’s comments specifically point back to David and the prequel storyline.

The next meaningful update will be a formal 20th Century announcement. Until then, the headline is that Scott wants to finish this story and that Fassbender’s David remains the reason to do it.

What We Think

David was the boldest and most divisive idea in Scott’s prequels, which is exactly why leaving his story unfinished has always felt so strange to me.

When I came out of a midnight showing of Prometheus, I was a little baffled. I wasn’t entirely sure what I had just watched, and I was confused about how it fit into the Alien franchise. But for some reason, the movie stuck with me. I kept thinking about it for the next week, and eventually I realized I really liked it. I liked the ideas it introduced, the questions it asked, and even the way it connected back to Alien. It wasn’t the traditional prequel a lot of fans expected, but I thought it was an interesting way to expand the franchise without simply treading the same ground again.

I also like Alien: Covenant, which was just as divisive in a different way. To me, it felt like Scott was responding to some of the criticism of Prometheus by bringing more familiar Alien elements back into the sequel, only to get criticized from the other direction. With a franchise this beloved, you’re probably never going to please everyone, and Scott ended up in a bit of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation.

Even with all the division surrounding the prequels, I always thought it was a shame that David’s story seemed destined to remain unresolved. Fassbender gave an incredibly engaging performance, and David was easily the most interesting part of those movies for me.

I’d love to see Scott finish that trilogy and finally show us where David’s story was headed, but “in development” is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now. Once 20th Century confirms the movie and Fassbender’s return, then I can start worrying about what fresh nightmare David has been building in the basement.