'Prometheus 2' release date, updates: First film's lingering questions to be answered

20th Century Fox
Prometheus official poster

While at the Toronto International Film Festival to promote his latest film "The Martian," director Ridley Scott spoke with Collider and revealed a few important plot details regarding his next project, "Prometheus 2." The first film ended with a lot of unanswered mysteries, and according to the director, a few of these questions will be addressed. 

"It starts off with a very grand idea — or a grand question, really," Scott told Collider. "Who are they and why did they create such evil biology and bacteriology? And in creating, to protect themselves from what? So the questions are answered there, or rather, beginning to be answered in 'Prometheus 2.'" 

The "they" Scott was referring to are the Engineers, the alien beings that created life on Earth including humans. As seen in "Prometheus," they also created the black bacteria-like alien bio-weapons that many believe are the ancestors of the xenomorph aliens seen in "Alien" and "Aliens." 

However, in the first film, it was suggested that the Engineers planned on unleashing these bio-weapons on humanity to destroy what they created. Why they created humans and then planned on killing them were some of the mysteries left unsolved. By the end of the film, only Dr. Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the android David (Michael Fassbender) survived and took off in an Engineer spaceship to seek out the answers. 

According to a report from Deadline, Scott also confirmed during this year's TIFF that Fassbender will be reprising his role as David. While Rapace was not mentioned, it is implied that she will be returning as well, as her and Fassbender's characters were the only survivors in the first film. 

"Prometheus 2" is scheduled to begin production in January next year with a release date some time in 2017. It will then be followed by Neill Blomkamp's "Alien 5," which will be released in 2018.