While it could be a while (if ever) before we see District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s sequel to Aliens, some details have now emerged that provide a bit of context for the film’s story and how it will relate to both the films before it and the movies that previously followed James Cameron’s action-oriented 1986 sequel to Alien.
According to Aliens actor Michael Biehn, who played Corporal Dwayne Hicks in the film, Blomkamp’s movie would pick up where the story left off with Hicks, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), and the child they rescued from the xenomorph-infested planet, Newt (Carrie Henn).
“They’re planning on bringing me and Newt back, and at this point Newt will be around 27 years old,” Biehn told horror news site Icons of Fright. “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.”
Given that Newt and Hicks didn’t have much of a role in David Fincher’s Alien 3, many have questioned how Blomkamp’s film will coexist with the established continuity of the franchise, which already includes both Fincher’s 1992 sequel to Aliens and 1997’s Alien: Resurrection.
The answer is simple, says Biehn: It won’t.
“The basic idea is acting like Alien 3 and (Alien: Resurrection) never existed,” he explained.
However, with Ridley Scott’s sequel to Prometheus — the newly retitled Alien: Covenant — set to begin production soon, Biehn confirmed that Blomkamp’s film is currently in a holding pattern.
“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,” said Biehn. “I know that Ridley’s focus is on the second Prometheus 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 if they just didn’t make the movie.”
There’s currently no timetable for Blomkamp’s Aliens sequel to begin production.
