They Mostly Reboot At Night, Mostly: Neill Blomkamp's 'Aliens' Sequel Would've Starred Newt

Neill Blomkamp's proposed Aliens sequel is probably not going to get made. The District 9 director ignited a whole tank full of flammable internet passion when he revealed that he was developing a direct sequel to James Cameron's 1986 classic, which would've ignored the events of Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection and followed Ellen Ripley and a no-longer-dead Corporal Dwayne Hicks on a new horror-tinged sci-fi adventure. Fans were split: some loved the idea of revisiting these characters while others thought it was an insult to the franchise and to the flawed-but-fascinating sequels.

In any case, Ridley Scott, the godfather of this whole series and the director of the original 1979 Alien, put an end to Blomkamp's movie by moving ahead with Alien: Covenant, the sequel to his Alien prequel, Prometheus (this probably sounds very confusing to non-initiated). However, this hasn't stopped actor Michael Biehn, who played Hicks in Aliens, from chatting about Blomkamp's vision, which would have reunited Ripley with Newt, her surrogate daughter.

For word on what could have been with Blomkamp's Aliens sequel, hit the jump.

Speaking with Icons of Fright, Biehn confirmed that Blomkamp's film would have wiped the third and fourth films out of continuity and showed confidence that the project wasn't entirely dead. According to him, 20th Century Fox would be downright foolish to not pursue this project once Scott is done with his movies:

The basic idea is acting like Alien 3 and 4 never existed. ... I know Ridley Scott is doing his movie first and is going to be the executive producer on this one, so I'm really looking forward to that. I know that Ridley's focus is on [Alien: Covenant] and I'm sure that he and Fox both don't want that and Neill's movie to come out right next to each other, because they're kind of two different worlds, with Aliens taking place thousands of years later, which is how they explained it all to me, but at the same time, they want to give them a similar feel. I know they're putting the brakes on Neill's movie just for a little while, but I really think that it would be embarrassing to Ridley and Fox and Sigourney [Weaver] if they just didn't make the movie.

But here's the really interesting part. It seems that this movie would have seen Sigourney Weaver passing the torch to Newt, the young orphan of Aliens, who will now be a grown woman. This, of course, would give future sequels a new lead to carry on Ripley's Xenomorph-killing legacy as Weaver stepped away from the franchise:

They're planning on bringing me and Newt back and at this point Newt will be around twenty-seven years old. I know that every actress in Hollywood is going to want to play this one, it's really a passing of the torch between Sigourney and this younger actress who would play Newt. It would keep the franchise alive and the studios would make money, because that's what the bottom line is now: money. That's why you end up seeing Terminator 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10 and The Fast And Furious 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Anyone else detect a few harsh notes of cynicism in both of these Biehn quotes? His brutal, grumpy honesty is certainly refreshing.

But at this point, there won't be an action-movie Newt, Hicks is long dead, and Ripley is living as an alien-hybrid clone in the distant future. Any new action is taking place in the past. We now know that Alien: Covenant will follow a ship full of colonists who arrive at a dangerous planet that's home to Michael Fassbender's sinister android David, who has found a new home after the disastrous events of Prometheus. Now, Scified claims to know a little more about what those colonists will face. This is about as unconfirmed as you can get, so treat this as fun speculation and conversation fodder, nothing more. Remember when an obviously fake Prometheus script tricked the internet about five years ago? We do.

Anyway, the rumor says that Alien: Covenant will feature two aliens, one of which is an entirely unique riff on what we've seen before. For the record, the grammar in the sample below belongs to that of Scified's source and it's confusing enough to earn a few raised eyebrows:

The movie will have 2 Monsters, one is new and both are different yet similar to the Xeno DNA. The NEW Monster is a New Event, so it's nothing created before the Events of the end of the First movie.... it's created by an event in the movie... and this New Monster is going to be based off of the Original Concept that Alien drew influence from, and this idea is something they had planned with Spaights' Ultramorph and so Gigers Necomonicon 4 is the starting point. This Monster will be transparent like a Jelly Fish to a degree.... and it's hinted that David plays a part in its creation.

If this is true (and you should be clutching a fistful of salt), Alien: Covenant will feature an alien that draws from the original H.R. Giger art piece that directly inspired the design of the original alien. Here's a sample of this terrifyingly phallic thing:

The same rumor also claims that David will have a hand in creating this version of the Xenomorph, which makes sense – that guy was up to no good in Prometheus and he's surely up to no good now.

Alien: Covenant will begin filming early next year for an October 6, 2017 release date. Thanks to The Playlist for bringing these links to our attention.