Last year it was announced that Neill Blomkamp's "Alien 5," which will allegedly ignore the events of "Alien 3" and its sequel to focus as a sequel to "Aliens," was being delayed and many fans feared that it may have been cancelled. Actress Sigourney Weaver recently spoke up and confirmed that it is still moving forward.
Speaking at an event for VMware (via Indiewire), the actress explained that as far as she knows the film is still lit for production and that they are simply waiting for the go signal to begin filming. She points out that they are simply waiting for director Ridley Scott to film and release his film, "Alien: Covenant" aka "Prometheus 2," first.
"Ridley wanted his movie to shoot and be released first," she stated. "But it's an amazing script, and Neill and I are really excited about doing it. We're doing other things until we can get going on that. I'd be really surprised if we didn't do it, because it's such a great script, and we love working together. So, it's just going to take a little bit longer to get out to you, but it'll be worth the wait."
Scott's film will pick up a decade after the events of "Prometheus," seeing a new crew land on the Engineer's planet. Michael Fassbender is confirmed to return but "Prometheus" lead Noomi Rapace appears to be sitting the film out. Both "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" serve as prequels to the original 1979 "Alien" film.
"Alien 5," as mentioned, will ignore the third and fourth "Alien" films and will see the return of Weaver as Ripley and Michael Biehn as Hicks. It is speculated that the studios will cast a new leading female to play an adult Newt, who was a young child in "Aliens," with the hope of Newt becoming the new face of the franchise.
As stated in a report from Collider, it appears that 20th Century Fox is attempting to build a shared cinematic universe between the films made by Ridley Scott and the one from Neill Blomkamp.
"Alien: Covenant" premieres in theaters on Aug. 4, 2017.
