Alien

When someone says they’re going to keep doing something until they die, they’re usually being figurative. But it would seem that Ridley Scott, now at age 79, fully intends on making the Alien franchise into his tomb. It’s impressive enough that he’s forged the most gore-heavy entry this deep into both the series and his own career, but Scott’s not losing his edge any time soon. In a new interview with Yahoo, Scott spoke about the future of the Alien movies, and you might wanna put on some shades, because the future’s looking real bright.

You definitely know Alien, and you love the series’ long-running heroine, Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver. But did you know that in the original script for Alien, Ripley wasn’t written as a female role? It was director Ridley Scott who had the idea to make the character female, and to cast a relative unknown, because he thought (correctly) that audiences would assume this young woman was doomed, leading to a surprise when she becomes the survivor of the xenomorph’s attack. That’s just one of the alienating facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

In hindsight, it seems kind of odd that we had two directors competing to make movies in the same franchise. Back in 2015, director Neill Blomkamp sort of bull-rushed Hollywood by releasing concept art from the Alien 5 sequel he had been working on for 20th Century Fox. This was despite the fact that Ridley Scott had already made Prometheus  —  a direct prequel to the events of the Alien universe  —  and was working on what would later become Alien: Covenant. After months of rumors and Blomkamp’s promise to bring back a few beloved characters, the project petered out, and Scott emerged the sole proprietor of the Alien franchise.

We can't lie to you about your chances, but you have our sympathies in trying to get any of this year's Alien Day merchandise.

The ending of Alien — one of the scariest movies of all time — isn’t exactly happy, but at least one of the members of the Nostromo crew survives. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley lives to fight another day, and another alien, but the original ending that Ridley Scott suggested wasn’t nearly as upbeat.

The hardcore Alien superfans among us already know full well that the moon of Acheron, the home of the ruthless extraterrestrial killing machines known as Xenomorphs, was scientifically classified as LV-426. And just as Star Wars devotees used a little in-joke to lay claim to a day of their own (May 4 is Star Wars Day, as in, “may the fourth be with you”), now April 26 will be henceforth recognized as Alien Day. A new press release has claimed the twenty-sixth of April as a day to recognize and celebrate Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi horror fusion, with plenty of special activities and events planned to commemorate the occasion.

There’s nothing better than when an iconic filmmaker accidentally lets new juicy details slip about the future of a franchise. For a while now we’ve been getting bits and pieces teasing the new Alien: Covenant, the (supposed) sequel to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. But now a new interview with the filmmaker questions that Alien timeline, and reveals the title of the next movie in the franchise.

Poor Billy Crudup doesn’t seem to know he’s in an Alien movie, the first one with that word in the title in a decade. Though this was initially billed as a sequel to Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s recent prequel to his most enduring sci-fi franchise, the latest trailer for Alien: Covenant makes almost no attempt to connect to that film, other than the presence of Michael Fassbender as another android like the one he played in Prometheus. Instead it looks more like a straight-ahead Alien do-over, with Katherine Waterston in the central female role.

Eggs are great. Fried eggs, poached eggs, baked eggs in shakshuka, eggs on avocado toast, boiled eggs in ramen, deviled eggs; there’s so many things to love about eggs. But eggs can also be pretty terrible if they’re housing vicious creatures from a far-away planets intent on bursting out of your chest and murdering you. I’ll pass on those eggs.

Movies in every genre take cues from other movies that came before, and sci-fi perhaps does this most of all. Gareth Edwards had never directed a space operatic sci-fi before Rogue One, so obviously he did some research before diving into directing the movie. There are elements of other Star Wars movies in Rogue One, of course, but he also revealed that there’s one planet introduced in the movie that’s modeled directly after the planet LV-426 from Ridley Scott’s Alien.