The Alien franchise has come a long way since its debut as a sci-fi home invasion horror film — in that director Ridley Scott has basically turned it into a rambling, sexually charged religious allegory on the meaning of life. The next film in the franchise, which is titled Alien: Romulus, will be written and directed by Fede Alvarez, and evidentially, Scott loves it.
Alvarez recently finished the “director’s cut” of the film (meaning it still needs to be fully edited and tested), but he wanted to show it to Scott before anyone else and so sent him a screener then went and met with the legendary director, who is known for being notoriously critical and honest, to see get his reaction face-to-face.
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“Even if he didn’t ask for it, I was gonna go there and sit at a table and look at him and get it,” Alvarez said at the DGA Latino Summit 2023 while being interviewed by Guillermo Del Toro. “Even if he was gonna say, ‘You destroyed my legacy,’ I wanted to be in front of him and see him in the eye. I didn’t want to get an email where it says, ‘Ridley says….’”
He walks into the room and he did say, ‘Fede, what can I say? It’s fucking great,’” he continued. “For me, it was like … my family knows it was one of the best moments of my life to have a master like him, [who] I admired so much, to even watch a movie I made, but particularly something like this … and talk to me [for] an hour about what he liked about it. … One of the best compliments he said was, ‘The dialogue is great. Are you the writer?’ Yes!”
That’s some high praise from a truly grand director, even if we can’t fully trust Scott’s idea of a great Alien film anymore. Still, Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus seems to be taking things back to basics. The movie will focus on a group of young people on a distant planet who are attacked by a Xenomorph. It sounds a lot like Evil Dead, which Alvarez directed the 2013 remake of, but in space. That brings the franchise back to its roots for sure.
Alien: Romulus is set for release on Aug. 16, 2024.
