Ridley Scott Says He Made One Huge Error of Judgment About the Alien Franchise

Ridley Scott recently recalled mistakenly believing that the Alien franchise died after Alien: Resurrection. While speaking with Total Film, Scott – who worked as executive producer on the recently released Alien: Romulus – reflected on how there was a time after the release of the 1997 sequel when he didn’t think there were any legs left in the sci-fi horror saga.

Alien: Romulus has proven that even now, over 25 years after the release of Alien: Resurrection, there is still plenty for the Alien movies to give with the right combination of story and purpose – as well as a great creature, obviously. For Scott, that creature was always the most important thing to the franchise, but there really was a time when he believed even the imposing presence of the Xenomorph had outlived its potential. He said:

“I think, wrongly, on Alien I thought the old beast had worn out. Because when we did the first [set of films], it was me, Jim [Cameron], David [Fincher], and the French guy [Jean-Pierre Jeunet] — there were four. They wore out. The beast wore out, and, in a funny kind of way, I found the beast partly by accident. Without that alien, you wouldn’t have ever had this film. With all the great casting in the world, when you have a film where it’s about being locked in with a creature — you better have the creature right. It can’t be The Creature from the Black Lagoon. And so many of these things are terrible. And it hangs on what that monster is, and also how you play with it when mostly less is always better for tension. And it’s easier to have a film that’s blood and gore with no tension. I tried to avoid that. And so it died.”

The Alien Franchise Was Never Dead

Of course, the universe of Alien didn’t die with the final chapter in Ellen Ripley’s story, as the Xenomorph subsequently appeared in two Alien vs Predator movies, and then Scott finally returned to the franchise with his two prequel movies, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. As he noted:

“And I sat and thought, ‘What a pity, because this is a huge franchise — maybe biggest apart from Star Wars and Star Trek ever — with legs.’ Because there’s still a long way to go with it. So I sat down with Damon Lindelof, actually. We sat down at a table, and spun a wheel to see: where could we go? And it all began with Prometheus.”

Both of Scott’s movies under performed at the box office, leading to his third “connecting” movie between Covenant and 1979’s Alien being abandoned. However, all things happen for a reason. Now, Noah Hawley’s prequel TV series to the original Alien is imminent, and many believe that its timeline placing of around 30 years before the Nostromo discovered the terrifying alien creature means it could replace the story Scott would have told in his lost prequel movie.