Neill Blomkamp’s “Alien” Sequel Halted Indefinitely… For now
There is nothing more disheartening than to receive bad news from the movie and entertainment industry, and the news we have to share is truly disappointing.
Neill Blomkamp (District 9), the director who was all set to helm the upcoming sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens (and thankfully wiping the third and fourth tragedies movies out of the canon), announced on Twitter that his untitled Alien sequel has been put on hold indefinitely.
According to BloodyDisgusting.com, Scott has been prepping to shoot his Prometheus sequel, Alien: Paradise Lost, early next year. Apparently this would mean that Blomkamp’s production would have to be pushed until after Scott could finish his Alien film, set for release in 2017. Furthermore, it would mean that Blomkamp wouldn’t be able to begin pre-production until mid-2017 at the earliest.
With that said, it’s sort of bizarre that Blomkamp is publicly announcing that he’s moving on to other projects.
Scott had revealed plans to do several Prometheus sequels, so why wouldn’t Blomkamp continue to develop and prepare his Alien in the meantime? This is all sort of telling and was foreshadowed a few months ago when we felt Blomkamp’s second Twitter campaign of images was a sign of desperation (he also did it again two weeks ago).
Twentieth Century Fox had announced Blomkamp’s involvement in the next Alien before Scott had decided what to do with his Prometheus sequels and before Blomkamp’s Chappie failed miserably at the box office. It could be that there’s been a lot of spinning wheels, for the fans’ sake, and that it has run its course. But this is all speculation.
We had reported back in August that Scott’s newly revived interest in the franchise had put a wrench in Blomkamp and FOX’s plans. Now let me just say, I actually enjoyed Scott’s Prometheus (I admit that the movie is far from perfect and doesn’t live up to Alien, but I did enjoy it which puts me in the minority) and I’m intensely curious as to see how Scott is going to create this arc of movies and weave Alien into the fold. As a fan of Ridley Scott I think this has the potential of being pretty spectacular, and I was very excited about how Blomkamp’s Alien sequel was going to fit into this “franchise” as well. Sadly we may never get to see Blomkamp’s vision for this project.
Whatever the case, we have several years of Alien sequels lined up, and now that Scott isn’t shying away from using Alien in the title, I expect more terror to ensue on the Engineers’ home planet.
alien is kinda holding/ pending prometheus 2. So I shall be working on other things… as much as I love the xeno- and Lt ripley
— Иeill BlomkΛmp (@NeillBlomkamp) October 30, 2015
So what are your feelings regarding this news? Are you happy that Blomkamp’s film has been put on hold until Scott could get his finished, or do you feel that Scott should abandon his project (given the lukewarm reception Prometheus received) altogether and just serve as producer for Blomkamp’s movie?
Let us know in the comments below!
