Sigourney Weaver

A transgender revenge thriller starring Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver? Forget we said anything.

Sigourney Weaver was the only one of the core actors from the original film (minus Rick Moranis who retired from acting) who was not going to be appearing in the new Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig version. But, as it turns out, Weaver will be appearing in the new Ghostbusters movie, alongside Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Dan Aykroyd and Annie Potts.

It was only a couple of months ago that we were posting updates on Neill Blomkamp’s Alien movie just about every other day, as the director was hit with a barrage of questions about the upcoming project during the press tour for Chappie (oh hey, remember Chappie?). It’s been a while since we got an update on Blomkamp’s Alien project, but the director has revealed a new piece of concept art featuring a couple of familiar faces.

Just when we thought that the TV-movie reboot trend had given way to straight-up resuscitating old series, in swoops Galaxy Quest for a bit of meta fun. The 1999 Tim Allen sci-fi comedy has officially been targeted for a TV adaptation from Paramount, bringing the crew of the NSEA Protector out of mothballs once again.

Alien is now widely considered to be one of the best sci-fi/horror films ever made, but originally Fox didn't want to make it. In fact, it was only the success of another one of the biggest sci-fi films of all-time — Star Wars — that convinced the studio to give director Ridley Scott the greenlight. So, without Chewbacca, there would be no xenomorphs. This is just one of the facts packed into the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies, which focuses on Alien!

The technology in Neil Blomkamp’s movies is so fully realized and intricately detailed that it feels like another one of his characters. Now Blomkamp’s made Chappie, a film where that’s literally true in the form of a police robot given the gift of human consciousness. The result is one giant metaphor for itself; a story of the world’s first true artificial intelligence and how it is almost corrupted by violence, presented in a movie where any semblance of serious consideration of what it means to be alive is drowned out by gunfire, explosions, and macho posing.

At this point it seems like a done deal that Neill Blomkamp is making a new Alien movie as his follow-up to this week’s Chappie. And it also seems like a done deal that Sigourney Weaver, the star of all four previous Alien movies, will be joining him to reprise her role as Ellen Ripley. But Blomkamp’s said he envisions his film connecting directly to Alien and Aliens, and the concept art he put on Instagram that sparked all this mishegas included images of Ripley alongside Hicks, the Space Marine played by Michael Biehn in Aliens. Does that mean Biehn will be back for Blomkamp’s Alien as well?

Neill Blomkamp sure is talking about every other Blomkamp project except Chappie, his new film hitting theaters next week. Mostly, he’s been talking about his plans for a new Alien movie, officially in development at Fox, and in between all of that Alien talk, he’s also admitted his errors with Elysium. It’s been a busy week for Blomkamp, who implied that his Alien project would ignore Alien 3 and Resurrection, the sequels to James Cameron’s more beloved original films. But now the director is backtracking, and he wants to make something clear: he’s not actually ignoring those films after all—not really, anyway.

Neill Blomkamp is currently out on the press trail for his upcoming sci-fi movie Chappie. But mostly he’s stumping for his initially theoretical, now-official Alien sequel, because that’s pretty much all he’s talking about. It’s definitely his next project, and it will definitely star Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, who has done battle with H.R. Giger’s drippy xenomorphs in four previous Alien films.

Just a couple of months after he released some fascinating concept art for a new Alien movie, it’s been confirmed that District 9 and Chappie director Neill Blomkamp is indeed working on that new Alien movie for Fox. His artwork was clearly inspired by original Alien franchise star Sigourney Weaver, whom we all assumed would definitely star in Blomkamp’s new project. And hey, guess what? She totally is.