Ever since Chappie and District 9 filmmaker Neill Blomkamp announced that he was making a sequel to Aliens, a litany of questions have arisen as to how Blomkamp’s new film would fit into the veritable cornucopia of sequels and prequels attached to the franchise. Blomkamp cleared up some of those questions during a recent interview, while simultaneously adding to the mystery surrounding the future of the sci-fi/horror franchise.
For those unaware, Blomkamp’s new film is designed to pick up after the events of Aliens, the 1986 sequel to Ridley Scott’s iconic Alien that started it all. Blomkamp’s story will move forward from the Aliens timeline, while departing from the continuity of Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection.
The issue is all the more complicated due to Ridley Scott’s own continuation of the Alien timeline with his prequel franchise that began with Prometheus. According to Blomkamp, his sequel won’t “tread on the toes” of Ridley Scott’s prequel series, which unfolds years before the events of the original 1979 film.
“I changed the one thing [Scott] felt was bumping Prometheus a little bit,” Blomkamp told Empire Magazine of the story he planned for the film. “One thing that makes me feel good about it is that Ridley is producing it. He likes the idea of what I want to make.”
However, Blomkamp reiterated that it was Scott’s Alien and the sequel directed by James Cameron, Aliens, that he was most concerned with following — and even joked that his film could be called “Alien 3 (No, Really!).” The real title he’s gunning for, though, remained a secret.
“I sent what I wanted as the title to Ridley,” he said. “It’s quite bold, and he was like, ‘I really like that.’ So I’m gonna test it, I don’t think it’s gonna work, though. I have my own idea but it gives away too much if I say the title. But in the event that it doesn’t work, I’m dead in the water…”
As for Prometheus and its forthcoming sequel, Scott is still expected to direct the follow-up to the 2012 film that cast Noomi Rapace as a scientist who comes in contact with the extraterrestrial race that may have created the deadly species of Xenomorphs that have slashed, bit, and belly-bursted a bloody trail through the franchise. The finale of that film left sequel possibilities wide open, and the script for the next film is rumored to reunite Rapace’s character with Michael Fassbender’s character David on a mission to the homeworld of the “Engineers” who brought the original aliens of the franchise into existence.
Blomkamp’s sequel to Aliens is tentatively scheduled to hit theaters in 2017, and the sequel to Prometheus is currently targeting a premiere date of March 4, 2016.
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