“Alien: Romulus” director Fede Alvarez has shot down this week’s wild rumor that Sigourney Weaver might be set to return as a ‘de-aged’ Ellen Ripley to the “Alien” franchise.
The DanielRPK scoop seemed to report that Alvarez was looking at bringing back Sigourney Weaver, with some CG facelift assistance, as Ripley for the planned sequel to ‘Romulus’.
Both that film and the sequel are set in the 57-year gap between the events of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and James Cameron’s “Aliens” when Ripley was in cryosleep drifting in the Nostromo’s shuttle.
How it would go about is not clear. Either way, Alvarez responded to the report on social media saying it was “fun gossip, but not true at all.”
DanielRPK responded to the update (via Reddit), saying people got confused: “I noticed some confusion about my recent post, so just to clarify: I wasn’t talking about the Alien: Romulus sequel. What I heard was about a new project similar to what Neill Blomkamp was trying to do.”
Blomkamp (“District 9,” “Elysium”) attempted to get a direct sequel to “Aliens” going back in 2015, one that would ignore the events of everything after “Aliens”.
20th Century Studios boss Steve Asbell has recently confirmed that other “Alien” films are in development beyond the ‘Romulus’ sequel. Sir Ridley Scott hinted he was working on a separate “Alien” movie late last year and says a sequel to “Alien: Covenant” is the obvious choice of project that could get a follow-up, telling THR: “David has alien eggs and 2,000 colonists hanging around. It’s a perfect beginning.”
That’s not even touching upon the “Alien: Earth” series set to debut later this year which will be set two years before the events of the first “Alien” film.
