Alien: Romulus 2 was basically killed by Ridley Scott, he seems to confirm

Ridley Scott admits that he thought Alien: Romulus was just “OK” and that he “we back and got involved.” More on the story here. News landed in the middle of last week that Ridley Scott was planning to return to the Alien saga for another round, with his wish to do his planned follow-up to ... Alien: Romulus 2 was basically killed by Ridley Scott, he seems to confirm

Ridley Scott admits that he thought Alien: Romulus was just “OK” and that he “we back and got involved.” More on the story here.

News landed in the middle of last week that Ridley Scott was planning to return to the Alien saga for another round, with his wish to do his planned follow-up to the disappointing 2017 flick, Alien: Covenant.

As we reported here, Scott wants to round off the story of Michael Fassbender’s David, a character he introduced in 2012’s Prometheus. He’s wanted to do that all along, but the commercial and critical response to Covenant put pay to that. When 20th Century Fox was then sold to Disney, the Alien saga took a while to restabilise itself, with 2024’s movie Alien: Romulus from Fede Alvarez, and the TV show Alien: Earth from Noah Hawley.

But Scott still holds power over the Alien saga. It’s unclear whether that’s contractual power, or reverence on the part of Disney. Yet if you’re wondering why Alien: Romulus 2 suddenly stalled a few months ago, Ridley Scott has now basically admitted that was down to him.

Chatting to AlloCine, he confirmed that “I’m rewriting the next Alien film”, adding that “I suddenly went back and got involved.”

Describing Alien: Romulus as just “OK”, he said that “I think it needs some help. So I’ve gone back in.”

There’s an argument that the person who skewed the saga off course a little was Scott himself, and that Alien: Romulus was a better film that Alien: Covenant. Furthermore, appreciating there are lots of variables to things like this, Alien: Romulus was a more commercially successful film that Alien: Covenant.

But also, it’s Ridley Scott, and even though he doesn’t have another film immediately set up at Disney – he’s doing Treasure Island with Sony, and might just get his Bee Gees biopic off the ground with Paramount – the studio clearly wants him on side.

Whether this happens or not remains to be seen. But for the second time in the last decade or so, Scott has now spiked an Alien sequel that didn’t fit his blueprint for where he wanted the franchise to go. For better or worse, I’ll let you decide. But as things stand, Michael Fassbender’s agent is awaiting a call, and Fede Alvarez is off developing something else…