Rumor Control: Does James Cameron Want To Emulate 'Aliens' By Making A 'Prometheus' Sequel? Not A Chance

It makes a certain sort of sense. Ridley Scott makes Alien. A few years later, James Cameron follows in his footsteps with the action-oriented sequel, Aliens. Now Ridley Scott has gone back to the Alien well for the prequel Prometheus. So I'm not surprised to see some talk about James Cameron doing a sequel to that film.

I am, however, surprised to see it come from the mouth of James Cameron. But just because the director talked about making a Prometheus sequel, does that mean such a thing is going to happen? Don't bet on it — just check the calendar.

The Guardian published a story today (the day after April Fool, for the record) in which it quotes Cameron talking about doing a Prometheus sequel based on a gag piece (edit: and just in case it wasn't clear, these quotes are not legit):

There's a gap of a few years between Prometheus and the original Alien... That gap is meant for me to answer all the questions raised in Prometheus.

Nice try, and supposedly the idea came up years ago during the making of Avatar. That is, quite some time before plans for Prometheus were really together, which should have been red flag number one:

Ridley came to me, and he saw what I was doing [with Avatar] and the ideas I was exploring... We sat down and talked about Alien, and saw that there's big ideas hidden in these stories. Where do we come from? What does it mean to be human? This was something that Ridley saw as original and something he wanted to be a part of. I'm not sure if Ridley changed his mind, because the movie [Prometheus] turned out fantastic, but it was during those early talks when he brought up the idea of me stepping in to direct a follow-up.

But just to make things clear, Deadline talked to "insiders" who said that Cameron was joking about a Prometheus sequel. (Whether Deadline's piece was meant to be a joke or not is unclear.)

As nice as the idea of a Cameron-directed sequel to Prometheus might be, from a full-circle sort of perspective, that really isn't something anyone should expect to see. Cameron has his own sequels to make, for Avatar. (Besides, then David Fincher would have to make his own follow-up, and that will never happen... or will it?) In other words, The Guardian bought into the prank, and that's given it some momentum.