Famed “The Warriors” and “48 Hrs.” filmmaker Walter Hill has a long history with the “Alien” franchise.
Hill produced and helped rewrite Ridley Scott’s original film, wrote the story for James Cameron’s “Aliens,” penned the script and produced David Fincher’s “Alien 3,” and produced Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Alien: Resurrection” along with the two “Alien vs. Predator” films and Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus”/”Alien: Covenant”.
Recently out promoting his new western film “Dead For A Dollar” at Venice, Hill revealed to THR he did an “Alien 5” spec script that would’ve brought back Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley – but there was no interest:
“We took a shot at that a couple of years back with Sigourney. But that was back when ‘Aliens’ was still at Fox. The people at Disney, who now control ‘Aliens,’ have expressed no interest in going down that road. I had an idea for a good story with the Ripley character and Sigourney. But I do hope to see her in Venice.”
Hill co-wrote that script with his late creative partner David Giler with the copy dated March 2020. It marked the third incarnation of a Ripley-led “Alien 5” script, the others being the abandoned Scott and James Cameron team-up take over two decades ago, and Neill Blomkamp’s direct sequel to “Aliens”.
The franchise, which has been in a bit of a limbo in recent years, is now set to get two projects in the near future – Noah Hawley’s Earthbound prequel series and Fede Alvarez’s new film at Hulu – neither of which involve Weaver’s Ripley.
