The much-hyped Alien 5 project by Elysium director Neill Blomkamp is dead, according to Ridley Scott.
Speaking to AlloCiné while promoting Alien: Covenant, the second prequel in the series following Prometheus, Scott was asked about Blomkamp’s project and said that Alien’s studio backers, Fox, “didn’t want to do it”.
“There was never a script,” he said. “It was an idea that evolved from, I believe, a 10-page pitch, and I was meant to be the producer on that. And it didn’t evolve. Fox decided that they didn’t want to do it and that was it.”
When asked directly if Alien 5 was ever going to happen, Scott said: “I don’t think so, no.”
Blomkamp’s project has been on-off for some years, with reports emerging in 2015 that it had got the go-ahead, having posted spectacular looking artwork on Instagram earlier in the year. Also in 2015, actor Michael Biehn, who played Corporal Dwayne Hicks in the James Cameron-directed Aliens, said that film-makers were “planning on bringing me and Newt back, and at this point Newt will be around 27 years old”.
•This article was amended on 3 May 2017 to correct the date of Michael Biehn’s interview.
