Ridley Scott believes he’s “done enough” with the Alien franchise.
In a recent interview with ScreenRant, the director looked back on his time with the extraterrestrial movie series and admitted he thought the franchise was “deadened” after the fourth film, Alien Resurrection.
“I think I felt it was deadened after 4,” he said. “I think mine was pretty damn good, and I think Jim’s was good, and I have to say the rest were not very good. And I thought, ‘Fuck, that’s the end of a franchise which should be as important as bloody Star Trek or Star Wars,’ which I think is phenomenal.”
Scott helmed the original 1979 Alien film and went on to return to the director’s chair for the fifth film, Prometheus, in 2012. There, he also served as a producer and signed on once more to direct the sixth movie, Alien: Covenant, before solely serving as a producer on 2024’s Alien: Romulus.
“A number of years after, I said, ‘I’m going to resurrect this,’ [and wrote] Prometheus from scratch – a blank sheet of paper,” he added. “It was very present and very welcome. The audience really wanted more. I said, ‘It needs to fly.’ No one was coming for it, [and] I went once again [and made] Alien: Covenant, and it worked too. Where it’s going now, I think I’ve done enough, and I just hope it goes further.”
Scott previously told The Hollywood Reporter he thought the franchise had been “ran firmly into the ground” following the fourth Alien film. He added, “Then I went back to [former 20th Century Fox chief Tom Rothman] and said, ‘Listen, there’s a way out. We should resurrect Alien with Prometheus.’”
While the Gladiator director doesn’t have plans to return to lead another Alien film, he is still involved in the franchise as an executive producer of Noah Hawley’s upcoming prequel series Alien: Earth via his Scott Free company.
