Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron Love Neill Blomkamp's ALIEN 5 Script
When Neill Blomkamp announced that he was developing Alien 5 with Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn, fans went crazy. It seemed like the sequel to James Cameron's Aliens that we have all been waiting for. Unfortunately, Fox put it on the backburner so Ridley Scott could make his new Alien prequel trilogy first.
During the Aliens 30th anniversary panel at Comic-Con over the weekend, Weaver and Cameron talked about the script and praised what Blomkamp did with the story. Weaver says:
“There is an incredible script by Neill. I didn’t want to do a fifth one. I thought going to earth wouldn’t be fun. I got this script that was amazing and gives fans everything they’re looking for and innovates in ways that became part of the world for me. He has things to do and I have things to do. And I hope that we’ll circle back around to do it once those things are done.”
Cameron has also read Blomkamp's script and it seems like he loved what he did with the story and thought it was a strong script. Cameron went on to say:
“I think it works gangbusters. He shared it with me, and I think it’s a very strong script and he could go make it tomorrow. I don’t know anything about the production, and I don’t know what Ridley [Scott]’s doing. But hopefully there’ll be room for both of them. Like parallel universes.”
The filmmaker then went on to completely trash David Fincher's Alien 3. When addressing the deaths of Newt and Hicks in that film, Cameron said:
“I thought it was dumb. I thought it was a huge slap in the face to the fans. I mean look, Fincher’s a friend of mine, and David is an amazing, amazing filmmaker, unquestionably. That was kind of his first big gig, and he was getting vectored around by the studio, and he dropped into the production late and they had a horrible script and they were rewriting it on the fly, and it was just a mess. I think it was a big mistake. So I certainly, had producer Gale Anne Hurd and I been involved, we would not have done that because we felt we earned something with the audience with those characters.”
It's not easy making sequels because most sequels suck, but Cameron has managed to make two insanely awesome sequels including Aliens and Terminator 2. The guy obviously knows what he's doing and when talking about developing a sequel, he said:
“I think there’s a tricky balance when you’re doing a sequel, between making it fresh, surprising the audience, but not surprising them with such a swerve that they feel that it’s not honoring the first film. You’ve got to play to expectations, you’ve got to play against expectations. And I always think that it’s about answering a question that you didn’t know to ask. But when they see it, it seems obvious.”
I hope that one day Blomkamp get to make his Alien 5 movie. It's cool to see Weaver and Cameron embrace and applaud what Blomkamp has done and it should give fans a peace of mind that if this film ever happens, it's going to be good and worth the wait. You can watch the full panel below: