There a new 50 page treatment for Alien 5 out there and Sigourney Weaver has read it! It’s not Neill Blomkamp’s famously canned sequel. This is totally new. It does feature the return of Ellen Ripley.
Weaver had been due to return to the role alongside Michael Biehn’s Hicks in the sequel helmed by the District 9 director however Ridley Scott decided he wanted to return to the Alien universe instead with Alien: Covenant and then the Fox / Disney merger happened.
Neill Blomkamp’s effort was shelved and that was that.
However Weaver recently let it slip to Empire that she received a new treatment from producer Walter Hill last year and read it. As to whether it will get made? She didn’t sound hopeful:
“Ridley has gone in a different direction. Maybe Ripley has done her bit. She deserves a rest.”
She did go on to say that Ellen Ripley was “always in my stomach” after more than 40 years tied to the character who got her an Oscar nomination for her portrayal in the 1986 sequel.
Since the Disney-Fox merger was completed the studio has been looking at its major franchises with a view to returning to them. Blomkamp says his version is totally dead now.
“I spent a long time working on that, and I feel like it was really pretty awesome. But politically, the way it’s gone now, and the way that it all is — it’s just not going to live.”
Original director Scott remains adamant that he will return to the Alien universe for another prequel to tie Prometheus and Covenant closer to the last voyage of the Nostromo. That would seem to push any chance of a return for Ripley even further away.
