Ridley Scott Gives 'Prometheus 2' Another New Title

Just under a couple months ago, director Ridley Scott revealed that the title of Prometheus 2 would more directly tie into the Alien franchise with the official title of Alien: Paradise Lost. The project is currently in active development, so much that it pushed back Neill Blomkamp's developing Alien 5 until further notice, leaving him to take on another sci-fi project in the meantime. However, according to Scott, there's a new Prometheus 2 title in place.

In a discussion this past weekend at the AFI Film Festival (via The Playlist), Scott began talking about how he came to be involved with The Martian, and that's when the new title was nonchalantly mentioned:

"I was going to be doing what will be called 'Alien: Covenant,' which starts shooting next February, and we were struggling then with the screenplay there and then there was a phone call, somebody saying, 'Listen, we've got this thing which is completely written called 'Martian,' and I said, 'Huh.' And I sped read it in an hour and by mid-afternoon, I talked to Fox and said, 'I need to talk to 'Drew [Goddard]...'"

While Paradise Lost was a reference to John Milton's classic 16th century epic poem which detailed the end of mankind, the new title is a little less ominous, and even more interesting. In general, a covenant is an agreement between God and humanity, and we can extrapolate that to be a reference to the relationship between mankind and the Engineers, one that combines theology and science in a very intriguing way.

Of course, all we can do is speculate at this point since all we know about the movie is that it will focus on a new group of explorers who find the planet of the engineers and likely encounter Elizabeth (Noomi Rapace) and David (Michael Fassbender), who were heading there at the end of the first movie.

So for now, Prometheus 2 will be called Alien: Covenant, but there's always a chance that the title will change again before it goes in front of cameras. The plan is for the sci-fi sequel (which is getting a rewrite from Skyfall scribe John Logan) to shoot in early 2016, likely aiming for a release in the summer of 2017. As the start of production looms closer, we'll be sure to let you know when more details come to light. In the meantime, learn more about Ridley Scott's career-spanning chat with AFI right here.

Do you like the new title for Prometheus 2?