Ridley Scott Confirms ALIEN Talks with Disney and Says The Franchise Needs To Evolve To Succeed

Disney already teased at CinemaCon that they were looking at continuing the Alien franchise now that they own all the Fox properties. Now director Ridley Scott has confirmed in an interview with THR that talks with Disney are underway to keep the franchise going, but says the only way to keep it relevant and successful is to evolve it. He explains that that’s how he approached his prequels.

“You get to the point when you say, ‘Okay, it's dead in the water’, I think Alien vs. Predator was a daft idea. And I'm not sure it did very well or not, I don't know. But it somehow brought down the beast. And I said to them, ‘Listen, you can resurrect this, but we have to go back to scratch and go to a prequel, if you like.’ So we go to Prometheus, which was not bad actually. But you know, there's no alien in it, except the baby at the end that showed, itself, the possibility. I mean, it had the silhouette of an alien, right?"

While the movie didn’t click with some fans, Scott did take a risk and that’s something he hopes to see future films do. Obviously that would be better than seeing the same things we’ve already seen over and over again. He continued:

“The alien is uniquely attached to Mother Nature. It simply comes off a wood beetle that will lay eggs inside some unsuspecting insect. And in so doing, the form of the egg will become the host for this new creature. That’s hideous. But that was what it was. And you can’t keep repeating that because the joke gets boring.”

“Go on, leave that behind, and see where it can evolve. So we're looking where we're going to evolve.”

He went on to talk about how unique Alien was and how it’s uniqueness is one of the things that made it work so well. He also believes that the first film will the best of the saga, which I don’t know if I agree with because I loved Aliens so damn much! He says:

“There’s only ever the one. It’s like trying to do a sequel to 2001. Fundamentally, you can’t. Really, with the greatest respect to Star Wars, the best film by far is the one that George directed, right? By miles. It was unique. It was absolutely wonderful to me. It was the fairy story of all fairy stories in space. And to follow through is a tough call. So, same with Alien.”

While there are discussions happening with Disney, he didn’t confirm whether or not he would be involved with any of them, but I’m sure he would have to be even if it was as a producer.

Personally, I’d like to see other filmmakers take on the franchise. I haven’t really cared for the recent Alien films that Scott has made, and I think the franchise needs some good talented new blood injected into it.

What would you like to see from the future of the Alien franchise under the new Disney/Fox banner?