What happened to Ridley Scott's Alien prequel movies?

This weekend, Alien: Romulus is set to ride into cinemas on a wave of alien goo and blood splatter. Forty-five years after the ill-fated crew of the Nostromo first met a xenomorph aboard their ship, incoming director Fede Álvarez is taking Alien back to its horror roots for something unashamedly scary.

But prior to Romulus and its resetting of the Alien timeline, original Alien director Ridley Scott had mounted a very ambitious project. He aimed to put together a series of prequels that would lead directly into the 1979 movie, while also posing philosophical questions about the very nature of life and creation.

The first of those films finally arrived in 2012 with the divisive, fascinating Prometheus and sequel Alien: Covenant showed up in 2017. But since then, this prequel franchise has gone cold. What happened to the prequels, and could we see more of them in the future?

Where did Ridley Scott's Alien prequels come from?

As the 1990s gave way to the new millennium, Ridley Scott and Aliens director James Cameron were working on an idea. They were planning to join forces for a prequel to Alien, which Cameron would write and Scott would direct. That project faded away after Alien vs. Predator took the franchise down a different path, but Scott couldn't let the idea go.

Read more: The Alien film we never got to see because of Alien vs. Predator (Yahoo Entertainment UK)

The idea was revived in 2009 after the AvP series crashed and burned, with 20th Century Fox convincing Scott that he had to be the one to direct as well as write the movie. Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof began work on a script and, by the time, the project started filming in 2011, everyone started trying to distance the film from Alien. This was something different, they said, albeit set in the same universe.

When Prometheus finally arrived, audiences weren't sure what to make of it. Its story followed a spaceship crew as they investigated a star map that appeared to lead to the very beginning of humanity, only to run into a very familiar, parasitic race of alien creatures.

It was as much a philosophical treatise as an outer space horror movie and this mixed identity led to mixed reviews. By the time its sequel Alien: Covenant came around, the franchise name had been restored to the title and the tone was far more connected to what people expected to see from these movies — scared humans and massive, killer extra-terrestrials.

Read more: Ridley Scott Regrets Directing ‘Alien: Covenant’ Over ‘Blade Runner’ Sequel (Variety)

Scott appeared to compromise when it came to Covenant, for which he wrote the script as well as returning to direct. He initially said there wouldn't be any xenomorphs in the new movie, before going back on that in the face of the feedback towards Prometheus. His ideas for a heady sci-fi series inspired by Paradise Lost wouldn't quite fly.

Scott also said that he would need at least one more film after Covenant to complete the bridge with the original Alien. As of 2024, he is yet to make that film.

Were the Alien prequels successful?

Prometheus did reasonably decent business at the box office, scoring a global total of $403m (£314m), despite lukewarm word of mouth — though critics liked it to the tune of a 73% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes. This was enough for Fox to want to greenlight a follow-up, but also a low enough number that all involved felt the Alien connection needed to be made more explicit.

Read more: Alien movies ranked worst to best according to fans (Yahoo Entertainment UK)

Covenant got a less positive critical response — 63% approval on Rotten Tomatoes — and also under-performed at the multiplex, earning a disappointing $241m (£188m) worldwide. Fox and Scott made noises about wanting to continue the franchise, but the numbers didn't necessarily add up.

In 2017, Scott told the Sydney Morning Herald: "If you really want a franchise, I can keep cranking it for another six. I'm not going to close it down again. No way."

Will there be more Alien prequels?

Ridley Scott has periodically delivered updates on the progress of his Alien prequel ideas, though there's nothing concrete about the future as things stand. When Disney purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019, they took control of the Alien franchise, and decided to do something new with Romulus rather than persevere with Scott's prequels.

Read more: Alien: Romulus ends up being too faithful for its own good (Digital Spy)

That hasn't stopped the director, though. In 2020, he spoke of wanting to "re-evolve" the franchise and answer questions about "the purpose of the eggs" in the first movie. Later that year, he said he was still working on ideas, but wondered whether he might have to "rethink the whole bloody thing and simply use the word to franchise".

Scott seems to have different priorities at this point in his career. He's 86 years old and still making massive movies, with Napoleon and Gladiator 2 his most recent two projects. So there's every chance he could blow the dust off his ambitious Alien prequel plans, especially if Romulus does well and shows that there's still mileage in the xenomorphs.

But even in that case, it's entirely possible that Disney takes a different message from it. If Romulus does well, maybe that shows that the future of Alien is divorced from what Scott has done before. Instead, it's time for a new generation of filmmakers to play in this acid-blooded universe.

Alien: Romulus is in UK cinemas from 16 August.