Fox tweeted on Monday that the new title for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus follow-up formerly known as Alien: Paradise Lost would be Alien: Covenant and that the film would open on October 6, 2017.
Scott is preparing to travel to Australia to scout locations for an anticipated February 2016 start on the project that will see Michael Fassbender reprise his role and is also believed to star original cast member Noomi Rapace.
The studio said the second episode in the Alien prequel trilogy that began with Prometheus “connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction.”
A synopsis revealed that as the crew on the colony ship Covenant head for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy they find an uncharted paradise that is in fact a dangerous world inhabited solely by the android David, played by Fassbender.
Speaking recently to Screen International for an upcoming interview, Scott said of the plot: “It’s picking up from where it left off. It’s like a cliffhanger – they go to where the Engineers came from. Most of it is spent on the Engineers’ planet. Fassbender’s head is going along for the ride. Yes he’s definitely going with it, with his body.”
The film had originally been set for a May 2017 release.
During an on-stage interview at AFI FEST last week, Scott revealed details of the upcoming Blade Runner sequel that Denis Villeneuve will direct. He started by talking about the opening sequence of the film as enisaged by himself and Blade Runner’s original screenwriter Hampton Fancher, who is writing the sequel.
“We sat there mucking about for a couple of weeks. We decided to start the film off with what was the original starting block of the original film,” Scott said during the event.
“We always loved the original idea of a dystopian universe, which actually, funnily enough, is way ahead of the game because we start off in what I would describe as a ‘factory farm’ – where would be a flat land with farming in this country. Wyoming. Not rolling – flat. You can see 20 miles of flat. No fences now, just ploughed, dry dirt.
“Pan around and you see a massive tree, just dead, but the tree is being celebrated and kept alive by four hoses so the wires are hauling the tree up.
It’s a bit like Grapes Of Wrath: there’s dust, and the tree is still standing. By the tree is a very traditional, Grapes Of Wrath-type white cottage with porch. Behind it at a distance of two miles, in the twilight, is this massive combine harvester that’s fertilising this ground that’s really on the way out.
“You’ve got 16 Klieg lights on the front and this combine is four times the size of the cottage. And now a spinner comes flying in, creating dust and of course, traditionally chased by the dog that barks, the doors open, guy gets out and there you’ve got Rick Deckard who walks into the cottage, opens the door, sits down, smells stew, helps himself, sits down and waits for the guy to walk up to the house to arrive.
“The guy’s seen him, so the guy now pulls the combine behind the cottage and it towers three stories above it and the man climbs down from a ladder – it’s a big man. He steps on the balcony. You go to Harrison inside. The cottage actually [groans]; this guy’s got to be 350 pounds. I’m not telling you anything else because you’ve got to go see the movie.”
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