This autumn, Alien: Romulus 2 was set to start filming. However, out of the blue, director Fede Alverez has stepped back. Some thoughts. With Alien: Earth proving to be a useful success for Disney+, and with Alien: Romulus helping itself to over $300m at the box office last year, there’s a commercial argument at least ... Alien: Romulus 2 | The sequel that’s suddenly stalled
This autumn, Alien: Romulus 2 was set to start filming. However, out of the blue, director Fede Alverez has stepped back. Some thoughts.
With Alien: Earth proving to be a useful success for Disney+, and with Alien: Romulus helping itself to over $300m at the box office last year, there’s a commercial argument at least that the Alien saga is in the best health it’s been since the 1980s.
Appreciating that it continues to push against the simplicity of its original premise – something Alien: Earth is having fun trying to expand upon – there’s still a healthy appetite out there for xenomorphs looking for a bite to eat. Straight after the release of Alien: Romulus, itself a project at one stage mooted for streaming, Disney was quick to get an Alien: Romulus 2 moving.
The plan would have been for the film to start shooting this autumn, feasibly pointing to a release next summer. Fede Alvarez had succeeded where other filmmakers had hit problems, melding the traditional elements of an Alien film alongside a few fresh ingredients. He was openly talking enthusiastically about getting the next film moving.
It came as something of a surprise, then, to read at the start of September that Alvarez was no longer on the project. “We just finished the script, actually, for a sequel for Romulus. But I’m gonna pass the torch on this one as director,” he announced, pretty much out of the blue. “I’m going to produce it, with Ridley Scott, we’re gonna produce it together and we’re right now trying to find a new filmmaker to come in.”
Here’s Ryan’s report on that, and the original interview over at TooFab.
Alvarez added that “We love the story and now we just want to find a director that really wants to go for the jugular.”
‘We love the story, but I’m not going to direct the film next month as planned’, in short. It feels a little odd, and the Hollywood gossip-diggers soon got to work. The prevailing, entirely unconfirmed rumour has become that Alvarez was keen to reintroduce Michael Fassbender’s character from Prometheus and Alien: Covenant in his Alien: Romulus sequel, but Ridley Scott – who has three Alien films as director under his belt, of course – wasn’t keen. That if Fassbender was returning to an Alien film, Scott wanted the option to make that film himself.
In terms of a rumour, it had enough of the sound of plausibility to it to pass a sniff test. Irrespective of whether the rumour was true or not, Ridley Scott is currently finishing off another film for Disney – The Dog Stars – and it’s entirely feasible that he’s added his planned Alien: Covenant follow-up to his never-ending slate of projects.
Scott, just for summary, has a Bee Gees biopic and Gladiator III in gestation at Paramount, and a new post-apocalyptic science fiction movie. That’s not counting the stuff he’s producing or executive producing.
He seems keen to crank out a film a year, until someone takes his multiple cameras off him.
And he may, not for the first time, feel he has unfinished business with the Alien saga. Michael Fassbender’s David was left in a narrative position all set to be picked up at the end of Alien: Covenant, but the disappointing financial returns of Scott’s film put the next in hypersleep. Then, Fox – the studio parent of the saga – got sold to Disney, and thus far Alien: Romulus and Alien: Earth have hatched instead of an Alien Covenant 2.
With both Scott and Alien riding a fine commercial wave at the moment, though – last year’s Gladiator II was one of Ridley Scott’s biggest-ever hits – might Disney have got itself into the position that Fox did, where not upsetting Ridley is key to the next film that gets greenlit?
Go back in time to 2015, when director Neill Blomkamp started talking about what became known as Alien 5. Blomkamp, off the back of sci-fi movies District 9 and Elysium in particular, had earned a prominent place amongst contemporary sci-fi directors (and count me as a fan of the much-maligned Chappie). He enthusiastically posted concept art, and teases of a film that’d effectively pretend Alien 3 didn’t exist. Sigourney Weaver was interested in reprising her iconic role of Ellen Ripley.
Ask most fans of the saga at that stage whether they wanted Ridley Scott to make a follow-up to 2012’s Prometheus, or to see whether Blomkamp should be given the controls, and I’d suggest more would opt for the latter.
But Hollywood is power, and Ridley Scott had it. 20th Century Fox was in the midst of a long working relationship with the filmmaker, and it helped that 2015 saw the release of one of his best contemporary films, The Martian. A Best Picture Oscar nominee and a huge hit, Ridley Scott was riding high. Blomkamp, meanwhile, was left licking his wounds when Chappie failed to ignite either critically or commercially the very same year. Fox ultimately had to decide whether to take a risk and go with Blomkamp’s Alien 5, or elect not to rock the boat and let Ridley make Alien: Covenant.
You know which film won out.
A decade later, an while there’s not an exact parallel, it does feel like there’s a choice to be made somewhere. Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus 2, or Ridley Scott’s Alien: Romulus 2. Or at least a director that Ridley Scott isn’t having a creative difference or two with.
Appreciating there’s much in the way of reading between the lines, it’s hard to shake the feeling that, at key points in the saga, big corporations go back to the first director, and won’t go against them. Disney also knows that there’s The Dog Stars press tour to navigate in March of next year as well. And while a Ridley Scott press tour is incredibly entertaining for us on the audience side of the fence, I’d imagine it makes a few meetings happen on the PR and marketing side.
What we’re left with for now is speculation and few facts. Alvarez remains aboard Alien: Romulus 2 as executive producer, although whether that’s ceremonial or hands on is unclear. A film that was supposed to be shooting in October doesn’t like it’s going to, given the pre-production required to mount an Alien movie in the first place. And we’re either going to get a filmmaker who’s acceptable to Ridley Scott, or, well, Ridley Scott.
In the meantime, a decision is imminent – if it’s not already been made – on Alien: Earth season two, and the showrunner of that, Noah Hawley, might be best keeping his eyes on that, and letting the movie side play out.
Meanwhile, don’t expect to see Alien: Romulus 2 in cinemas in 2026…
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