The director of Alien Romulus – Fede Alvarez – has been resurrecting the Alien Vs Predator idea in a new chat. More here.
Fede Alverez has restored the Alien series to some of its former glory with Alien: Romulus, which is currently in cinemas and is performing well, both critically and commercially. You can catch our non-spoilery review here.
While we don’t yet know what the future holds for the Alien series, Romulus’ $108m opening weekend puts it in decent stead to go onto commercial success, tripling the opening weekend gross of 2017’s Alien: Covenant while costing less to make.
That may well mean that Alvarez could be invited back for another sojourn into the world of Alien and he’s been publicly mooting that possibility in a fashion that is sure to set off the interest of movie fans. Simply, he’s invoked the possibility of an Alien Vs. Predator film. Or another one, to be exact, given that we’ve already received two films where the popular alien monsters duked it out (although for those that keep score with such things, they aren’t canon – at least not in the world of Alien).
The rather limp critical reception to those two movies doesn’t seem to be putting Alvarez off though (unless of course this is just a little jesting on his part). Speaking about where the Alien films could go next, Alvarez floats the idea of once again pitting the xenomorph against the race of mandible-jawed alien hunters, a series that have also recently been successfully relaunched by Dan Trachtenberg in 2022’s Prey.
“Maybe it’s something I’ll have to co-direct with my buddy Dan,” Alvarez told Deadline. That friend Dan of course being Tratchenberg.
Trachtenberg is already working on another movie in the Predator franchise and Alvarez even floats how the pair could collaborate, suggesting, “maybe we should do like Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did with Dusk Till Dawn. I’ll direct a half, and he’ll direct another half.”
Could this happen? With 20th Century Studios having finally got both series back on track after decades of malaise, we aren’t sure the studio would want to put both franchises at risk, especially given the unfortunate history of the previous AVP films. Still, it has the filmmakers to do it, and the idea of a successful Alien Vs Predator showdown practically guarantees big box office.
There are those that will point to the overt use of references from Alien's past in Romulus and wonder why Alvarez is so keen to once again draw from the series’ past when perhaps he could be charting new territory (we’ve gone into spoiler-y depth on that here). But if this is what excites him, let’s see how serious he is about the prospect. Will Romulus have enough legs at the box office to give the filmmaker the necessary juice to pursue this project? If nothing else, it’s a fun idea to consider. Will it become more? Should it become more? Let us know your thoughts below.
