Ridley Scott Announces New 'Prometheus 2' Title

Ridley Scott recently stated that his Prometheus movies wouldn't link up with Alien for another two or three movies. But the titles of his Prometheus movies will get there a lot faster, as evidenced by the just-revealed title for Prometheus 2. Find out the Prometheus 2 title after the jump. 

Speaking to HeyUGuys, Scott revealed that the next Prometheus film will be titled... drumroll please... Alien: Paradise Lost. Watch Scott announce the Prometheus 2 title below.

Literary types will recognize Paradise Lost as the title of an epic 17th century poem by John Milton about the Fall of Man – Adam and Eve giving in to temptation from Satan, and their subsequent banishment from the Garden of Eden. Scott noted that the reference was very deliberate. "It sounds intellectual, but there's a similarity to it, that's where it stops," he teased.

Just as Milton's Paradise Lost deals with the beginnings of humankind, so will Scott's Alien: Paradise Lost, in its own way. The film picks up where Prometheus left off, with Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and David (Michael Fassbender) striking out for the Engineer spacecraft in search for answers.

"I thought the subtext of that film was a bit florid and grandiose, but it asks a good question: who created us?" Scott said in an earlier interview. "You've got to go back and find those engineers and see what they are thinking. If engineers are the forerunners of us, and therefore were creators of life forms in places that were possible for biology to function, who created that? Where's the big boy?"

Meanwhile, the first half of the title seems intended to drive home the fact that the Prometheus movies are part of the Alien universe, even if the Prometheus storyline hasn't crossed over into the Alien one just yet. It's probably a savvy move from a marketing standpoint, since Alien is the more familiar and more beloved brand name.

But we've gotta wonder what this means for Neill Blomkamp's planned Alien movie, which was supposed to carry on the torch for the Alien half of the Alien / Prometheus universe. The title Alien: Paradise Lost repositions Prometheus as a central part of the Alien franchise rather than an offshoot, undermines the notion that Blomkamp's movie is the "real" Alien sequel.

Which might be the idea. There's been some speculation that Scott was not too thrilled about Blomkamp's project, based on reports that he demanded Fox delay it until Prometheus 2 was done. So if that's the case, well played, Scott.