Trailer for ALIEN: EARTH released

FX has released the trailer for Alien: Earth, the first TV series based on the Aliens franchise.

The series is set in the year 2120 and opens on Neverland Research Island on Earth (this is two years before the Nostromo visits the planet LV-426 in the original movie Alien), where human-synthetic interfaces are being developed. A spacecraft has returned to Earth with five apex alien lifeforms on board, each capable of tremendous violence and destruction, crashing into Prodigy City. One of the creatures, predictably, is our favourite xenomorph, but the natures of the other three are unclear. To deal with the crisis, the Company sends in a team of synthetics to investigate further.

Alien: Earth is written and showrun by Noah Hawley, the much-feted creative force behind the TV series Fargo and Legion. It stars Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adrian Edmondson and Max Rinehart, amongst many others. Ridley Scott is producing.

The series debuts on FX and Disney+ on 12 August 2025, and will run for eight episodes.

New ALIEN movie starts shooting next week

A new Alien movie starts shooting next week, which is kind of surprising given how little fuss has been made about it.

The new Alien film is being produced by Ridley Scott, but it will actually be directed by Fede Alvarez (the reasonably well-received 2013 Evil Dead remake) from a script by his usual collaborator Rodo Sayagues. The two also worked on the 2016 horror movie Don't Breathe and last year's Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot.

The film stars Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim: Uprising, Mare of Easttown) and Isabela Merced (Dora and the Lost City of Gold), with David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu also on board.

Remarkably, we know almost nothing about the film, such as where it fits in the Alien timeline. The plot synopsis is decidedly vague:

"In this ninth entry in the immensely popular and enduring film series, a group of young people on a distant world find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe."

That does seemingly confirm the film has no crossover with Noah Hawley's incoming Alien TV show, which is set on Earth, possibly after the events of Prometheus but before Alien itself.

The synopsis is also interesting for listing eight prior Alien films: Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), Alien: Resurrection (1997), Aliens vs. Predator (2004), Aliens vs. Predator 2: Requiem (2007), Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). In its recent licensing and canon announcements, the two Aliens vs. Predator films were omitted from the Aliens canon (as suggested by Prometheus, which seemingly contradicts the events of the AvP movies) and Fox have indicated that regard the Aliens, Predator and AvP franchises as three distinct timelines and continuities.

The synopsis does sound a little disposable as a story concept, but it will be interesting to see what comes of it. The film is presumably targeting a 2024 release window.

Amazon greenlights BLADE RUNNER 2099 TV mini-series

Amazon has greenlit Blade Runner 2099, a live-action TV mini-series set in the world of the 1982 movie Blade Runner and its 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049. They initially announced the series was on the fast track to development back in February.

Ridley Scott, who directed the first movie and produced the second, is on board as executive producer and consultant. Silka Luisa (Shining Girls) is the main writer and showrunner for the project. Tom Spezialy (Watchmen, Ash vs. Evil Dead) is also on board as a writer. Alcon Productions (The Expanse) will make the show in conjunction with Scott's own production company, Scott Free.

Both Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 were commercial disappointments on their original release, but have grown to be cult successes, with both movies enjoying an impressive long tail on video, DVD, Blu-Ray and now streaming. Both films have also enjoyed substantial critical acclaim.

Moving the story a full fifty years on from the events of Blade Runner 2049 suggests there will be few, if any, story or character crossovers with earlier iterations of the franchise. Amazon fast-tracking the project suggests it will film in 2023 for a likely 2024 release.

Amazon puts cyberpunk TV series BLADE RUNNER 2099 into development

Amazon Studios have fast-tracked development of Blade Runner 2099, a live-action TV series set in the world of the 1982 movie Blade Runner and its 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049.

Ridley Scott is executive producing the new series, which will be showrun and primarily written by Silka Luisa (Shining Girls, Strange Angel). Alcon Entertainment, which recently produced The Expanse for Amazon, is the production company.

Staffing up is underway, with Amazon having already greenlit multiple scripts and production dates already being considered. Apparently Amazon are courting Scott to direct the first episode.

The rapidity of the project may raise eyebrows. Blade Runner 2049 was only a modest success, making $260 million on a production budget of ~$170 million. The filmy likely only just squeaked into profitability on the basis of media and streaming sales. However, the film has had a solid long tale and its director, Denis Villeneuve, has since enjoyed a much bigger hit with Dune: Part One, which may have encouraged people to seek out his earlier work.

Although neither film has been a huge financial success, both have enjoyed immense critical acclaim, which Amazon may be hoping translates into a solid home audience for a further continuation. However, by setting the movie a full fifty years after the events of the previous film, it looks like they are not thinking of having any continuing characters.

ALIEN to get its first TV series from the showrunner of FARGO and LEGION

Fargo and Legion writer-director Noah Hawley is bringing Ridley Scott's xenomorph back to Earth.

Hawley is developing a TV series for FX which will bring the alien to Earth in the "not-too-distant future." It's unclear what this means, since the original Alien movies were set in 2122 and 2179, not too far in the future at all. Given Fox's ambivalent regard for the canonical status of Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, and pretty much confirming that they do not consider the Alien vs. Predator films canon any more, it may be that the new film will be set after the events of Aliens and could see the return of the Sulaco survivors to Earth, possibly bringing xenos with them.

The alternative, a story bringing xenos to Earth in the much nearer future (perhaps tying in to Scott's Prometheus and Covenant films), would struggle with the continuity that no one has heard of the xenomorphs before in the original film.

The project is in development for a likely 2022 debut, with Hawley to write and direct and Ridley Scott in talks to produce. Scott is also developing a third film to connect Prometheus and Covenant to the original Alien, but this project has so far not been greenlit.

Wertzone Classics: Alien

In the year 2122, the deep space freighter Nostromo is diverted to Zeta Reticuli to investigate a beacon of unknown, possibly extraterrestrial, origin. The crew find an enormous derelict spacecraft, its cargo hold filled with eggs. A strange parasite attaches itself to one of the crew, beginning a nightmarish journey for the rest.

Reviewing Alien at this point is akin to reviewing the Bible, or Harry Potter: you've probably already digested it and can recite it line for line, or you've already decided it's not for you and you're probably not going to get round to checking it out.

For the minuscule number of people still on the fence, Alien more than deserves its reputation as a slow-burning masterclass in tension and pacing. Whether it's Ridley Scott's greatest masterpiece or not can remain the subject of hot debate (with at least Blade Runner making a convincing case not), but it's certainly up there in importance.

The film has numerous strengths: the industrial, low-fi sets and aesthetic were revolutionary for its day and remain impressive today. The characters are somewhat lightly sketched but the actors inhabiting them are so good that it doesn't matter, and they bring them to life with, in some cases, just a few lines of dialogue in the whole film. One of the film's more underrated aspects is that Scott doesn't let the camera linger on any one character too long, meaning that even identifying the film's protagonist and most likely survivor is extremely difficult (at least not without pre-knowledge about the franchise, which is almost impossible to avoid today), greatly increasing the film's tension.

The design of the xenomorph (courtesy of macabre artist extraordinaire H.R. Giger) remains nightmarish and striking, although it has to be said that the suit doesn't quite survive scrutiny in the high-definition era (particularly the chase sequence in the ventilation ducts). Fortunately, this was a concern of Scott's even in 1979 and the creature is wisely kept in the shadows and on the edges of the frame in most cases, so the "man in a suit" issue doesn't really come up.

The film is also very well-paced, with the tension building over the opening section of the movie and the alien kept firmly off-screen until the second half. The idea of the creature stalking the air ducts and hiding in the ceiling fills scenes with a near-visceral sense of dread, so powerful that Creative Assembly achieved tremendous success in copying the format for their 2014 video game Alien Isolation. Scott's use of lighting and camera angles is masterful.

The film does have a few minor blemishes. The model work is pretty ropy, which a few years earlier it could have gotten away with. But filmed a year after the release of Star Wars and having a comparable budget, there really isn't any excuse for the often-underwhelming establishing shots of the Nostromo (even more disappointing given how fantastic the design is), which at their weakest have a little bit of the feel of Blake's 7 to them. However, Alien is not supposed to be a special effects extravaganza and the low-fi feel to the effects does help with the old-school horror vibe of the film. I've also never been a fan of Alien's soundtrack: the main, stripped-back theme is fine but the incidental music throughout the film often feels incongruous (and well below-par for Jerry Goldsmith) and at times disrupts the film's atmosphere.

Minor criticisms aside, tremendous tension, expert pacing and finely-judged performances combine to make Alien (****½) one of the greatest science fiction horror hybrids of all time. There are a few cracks where it's starting to show it age, but overall this is a very strong movie.

A note on edition: there are numerous editions of the Aliens movies available. Probably the best is the Alien Anthology Blu-Ray box set, which features both the original cinematic editions and extended versions of all four main-series Aliens movies, complete with tons of special features. This is available now in the UK and USA.

Alien: Covenant

December 2104. The colony ship Covenant is on its way to Origae-VI to establish a new settlement. A neutrino burst damages the ship in interstellar space and kills several crewmembers in hypersleep. Awoken by the ship's synthetic, Walter, the crew effect repairs and discover a signal emanating from a nearby star system, from a planet that is a much closer match for colonisation. Arriving on the planet, the crew find signs of life...and an answer to a mystery from a decade earlier.

Alien: Covenant is Ridley Scott's sequel to his 2012 movie Prometheus, itself a semi-prequel/semi-spin-off from his 1979 horror masterpiece Alien. As the titles suggest, Prometheus was much more of a stand-alone movie sharing some DNA with the rest of the franchise but not focusing on the titular creature. Covenant instead brings back the traditional xenomorph and establishes how it was created, whilst resolving some of the questions left dangling from Prometheus.

The result is an interesting hybrid movie which feels like it's trying to do several things simultaneously. It's trying to be an action-horror movie in its own right, a sequel to the more weighty concerns in Prometheus and a prequel to the events of the original movie. Considering a prequel to the original movie, let alone two, was never narratively necessary, this was an controversial decision, but one that ultimately pays off.

Covenant has a familiar set-up: a starship picks up a distress call and diverts to investigate, finding a ruined alien ship harbouring something nasty, something which can infect humans and turn them into the incubators for monstrous creations. Things quickly go wrong and mayhem results. The film borrows its basic structure from Alien, although it does mix the ingredients up to keep things more unpredictable without descending into the sheer randomness of Prometheus.

What helps keep all of this intriguing is that Ridley Scott is, even at the tail end of his career, still a masterful director with a tremendous sense of visual power and a strong design aesthetic. The Covenant and the various locations in the film are all impressive pieces of design, if less striking than Prometheus. Scott can also build tension like few other directors. This time around he's helped by a script which doesn't rely on the characters being quite as monumentally stupid as the ones in Prometheus, based on the fact these guys are engineers and colonists having to work way out of their comfort zones, rather than the alleged first contact specialists and biologists of the previous movie.

The film is paced pretty well, with the action unfolding continuously from the landing on the planet to the final confrontation with the creature, and handles a distinct shift in storytelling when David, the android from Prometheus, shows up and effectively shoehorns a follow-up story from that movie into the middle of this more traditional Alien tale. Mostly propelled by Michael Fassbender's superb performance (as both David and the Covenant's synthetic of the same class, Walter), this actually works to the film's benefit, providing a shift of pace and perspective which changes things up and keeps things fresh even as we begin to move away from the focus of Prometheus (the Engineers and the black goo-ex-machina) and back towards the franchise's star creature.

The final part of the movie - the human crewmembers versus the xenomorph with the androids serving as wild cards - is a bit more standardand and you can feel Scott checking out a little bit in the final battle with the creature in the Covenant's hanger bay (which viewers familiar with both Alien and Aliens may find dully predictable), but it's all well-handled. Less forgivable is a blatant sequel hook which, given Covenant's modest box office performance, may have been a bit optimistic. As it stands there's still a lot of unanswered questions on how the events of Prometheus and Covenant lead into Alien, but some of the revelations in Covenant make this perhaps a more interesting question than it appeared from Prometheus alone.

Most of the cast are pretty good, with a surprisingly effective dramatic turn for Danny McBride and a strong leading performance with Katherine Waterston, with a good supporting turn by Billy Crudup. Fassbender with his dual roles steals the film, however, providing an icy new antagonist for a franchise that urgently needed one, having all but burned out the threat level of the xenomoph through over-exposure.

Alien: Covenant (****) is an effective action-horror movie which overcomes over-familiarity with some excellent performances and superb direction and design work, although the soundtrack is at best forgettable. Stronger than Prometheus, if not on the same level as Alien and Aliens, it shows there is some life left in this franchise. The film is available now on Blu-Ray (UK, USA).

On the Edge of Blade Runner

Back in 2000, British film critic Mark Kermode made a BBC documentary called On the Edge of Blade Runner, in which he investigated the cultural impact of the movie and its torturous filming process. Harrison Ford and Sean Young declined to take part, but director Ridley Scott, the writers, producers and most of the rest of the cast participate, for an insightful look at what was a very difficult movie to make. You can watch the whole thing below:

On the Edge of Blade Runner from Ace Iver Punc on Vimeo.

Blade Runner 2049

California, 2049. Blade Runner "K" retires an old-model replicant who is pursuing a life of peace on a remote farm. In the process he unearths a secret, something that has remained buried since before the epoch-changing event known as The Blackout. Charged by his superiors with investigating this mystery, he follows a trail that leads him from the tech-canyons of Los Angeles to the dumps of San Diego to the radioactive wastes of Las Vegas. It's also a journey into his own heart and forces him to confront the question of who he is, and what it is he lives for.

Blade Runner 2049 is a movie that should not work. Blade Runner - a loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - was a movie rooted in ambiguity, in which far more was left unsaid than spoken out loud and where the still-astonishing visuals masked a strong vein of character and thematic subtlety. The film's ending seems to explicitly reject further exploration of that world, and three disappointing sequel novels (by K.W. Jeter, a friend of Philip K. Dick's and fellow traveller in SF dystopian fiction) only reinforced that idea. The announcement that Ridley Scott was helming a sequel to do to Blade Runner what Prometheus did to Alien was enough to make movie fans break out in a cold sweat, only moderately alleviated when Scott bailed and a director no-one had heard of was announced in his stead.

That director, Denis Villeneuve, had already some intriguing form in movies like Sicario, but it was last year's Arrival that made people really sit up and take notice. A beautifully-shot movie with a pace that was relaxed but intense, stand-out performances and a phenomenal sense of atmosphere, Arrival was a stand-out work, a piece of art that also worked as a strong science fiction piece. And Blade Runner 2049 is the same, but even moreso. It is a virtuoso triumph that on absolutely no level should work, but on almost every level it does.

Blade Runner took us deep into the streets of a future (and now - in two notable moments - explicitly alternate history) Los Angeles, with neon-lit grime and rain-soaked futurism. Blade Runner 2049 revisits the city - which is now larger, even more imposing and less human - but relatively briefly. Instead we spend a lot of time on the outskirts of the city, in the grey-soiled remnants of California, in a San Diego turned into an vast industrial wasteland and a Las Vegas slowly being swallowed by the desert. When you think of Blade Runner you think of those towering tech-pyramids, and for Villeneuve to minimise that imagery in the movie's sequel is a brave move, but one that exemplifies his goal with this film: to craft a successor to Blade Runner, not a retread. And it's a successor on every level, with the core question of the original movie, what does it mean to be human, taken to an even higher and more ambiguous level.

Blade Runner 2049 very quickly identifies its protagonist as a replicant and one who seems to be relatively content with his lot, complete with an AI girlfriend and a good working relationship with his boss, but a few key moments of revelation see him going down a path of self-discovery that is a reflection of Rachael (and Deckard if you subscribe to that theory, a theory that this movie cheerfully does nothing to confirm or deny) in the first film. What are the replicants? Unthinking, soulless machines or a new type of human, one that is stronger, faster and smarter than the originals? Is using them a slaves even remotely morally justifiable? The fact that human civilisation on Earth and in the offworld colonies would collapse without them makes it very easy for the "real" humans to ignore the question, and the introduction of a new breed of replicant that is 100% loyal and obedient seems to render the question moot. Enslaving a race that seems to have no qualms about being enslaved makes it easy to pretend it's not slavery at all. At least, until one very small secret is learned and turns the entire world on its head.

Blade Runner 2049 understands that the simplicity of the original Blade Runner was a key part of its success: the plot was pretty bare bones and the sequel follows suit, the main plot being a simple (ish) missing persons case. But K's following of the clues becomes unexpectedly harrowing, revealing greater depths to this world and the existence of his own kind. Villeneuve and writers Hampton Fancher and Michael Green have taken the set-up from the first movie and extrapolated a storyline that follows it up perfectly, without damaging the integrity of the first movie in any way. The film even pays homage to some of the futuristic dystopian movies that have come in its way, with several brief nods to the numerous anime (but most famously Akira and Ghost in the Shell) that have borrowed the original Blade Runner's visual stylings. The film also gives us the weirdest love scene since Ghost, although one that is also altogether healthier and more positive than the original movie's rather debatable relationship between Rachael and Deckard.

This film works tremendously well. The cast is excellent, Ryan Gosling in particular doing a lot of work with his eyes and his reactions to the revelations he encounters. Robin Wright as his boss is perfect, the steely resolve we've come to expect of her mixed with several unexpected, and all the more effective, moments of real human vulnerability. Sylvia Hoeks as replicant enforcer Luv is terrifying, blank-eyed and emotionless when carrying out violence, but she also occasionally shows what she really thinks of what's going on through flashes of honest emotion. Jared Leto is okay as new tech-king Wallace, but he does get the lion's share of ripe dialogue in the film. He's only in two scenes of consequence and they're both the more interminable scenes of the movie. The film's biggest revelation is Ana de Armas, a young Cuban actress who is given a very difficult role as Joi and carries the role with charisma, sweetness and resolve (even if her storyline may make fans of the animated series Archer do a double take).

Harrison Ford shows up again as Deckard and is perfectly fine, showing charisma and cynical humour in his role. This is actually a bit distracting - Deckard was very much an un-Harrison Ford-ish role, reserved and cold and undemonstrative compared to Indiana Jones or Han Solo - since Ford plays the older Deckard more as a subdued version of Han Solo in The Force Awakens. I enjoyed his performance, but I didn't really believe I was seeing the same Deckard as in Blade Runner, just thirty years older. This would be a bigger blow to the film if Ford was actually in it for any substantial amount of time, or if his role was integral to the movie. Although Ford's presence allows for some excellent moments of reflection and soul-searching (including what may be the greatest special effect in film history, to the point where I eagerly await learning how the hell they did it), the same story could easily have been told without him.

Another negative is the score. It's certainly not bad, but it lacks a theme as memorable as anything in Arrival. Johan Johansson began composing this movie but was ousted in favour of Hans Zimmer, who then hands in a completely unmemorable Johan Johansson cover work, which is one of the more bizarre scoring decisions I've seen in recent years. I appreciate that no-one was trying to out-Vangelis Vangelis, but the decision to go in a different, more traditional direction and then make a hash of it is disappointing.

Blade Runner 2049 (*****) does the impossible: it crafts a sequel, a successor and a subversion which respects the original whilst not being afraid to be different from it, that knows what made the original film work without slavishly copying it and which raises many of the same questions in a different way. The combination of story and visuals has profound thematic and character consequences which will drive as much discussion about this story as it did the original, as will the somewhat open ending. If this film does well expect a third trip to the Blade Runner universe, and we'll probably not have to wait another thirty-five years for it. Part of me hopes the movie doesn't do well: the story wraps up well enough and the only place the story can go in a third film is a very familiar one.

Blade Runner 2049 is on general release now. Villeneuve's next movie will be the holy grail of SFF adaptations, Dune. Right now, I think he can actually do it justice.

Wertzone Classics: Blade Runner

Los Angeles, 2019. The Earth is grimy and grim, covered with vast cities of towering skyscrapers. Most animal life has been wiped out, replaced by expensive synthetic counterfeits. Counterfeit humans - replicants - also exist, carrying out dangerous, dirty work in the offworld colonies. For security their lifespans are limited to just four years. Four replicants have come back home, seeking to extend their lives. A replicant-hunter, a blade runner, is sent to stop them.

Blade Runner was released in 1982, a movie by Ridley Scott based (loosely) on Philip K. Dick's short novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film had an initially mixed critical reception, but this improved with the release of the 1991 Director's Cut, which restored a subplot raising the question of if the central character of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is himself a replicant. This cut also removed a series of unnecessary voiceovers and a studio-mandated "happy ending" that Scott had hated. In 2007 this version was superseded by the Final Cut edition, which restores some more scenes and tweaks others whilst completely digitally remastering the film in proper high definition (with eye-popping results).

The power of Blade Runner does not lie in its story - which is slight - but in its visuals, atmosphere and in its thematic exploration of the nature of what it is to be human. The replicants appear to be intelligent, sentient and capable of emotion, so the decision to use them as slaves is morally dubious; on the other hand they are also capricious, child-like and do not have an innate value for human life, killing those who oppose them with ease and ruthlessness. Deckard starts the film as a man of apparent moral certainty, willing to execute replicants. His meeting and association with Rachael, a cutting-edge replicant with much more human characteristics, raises doubts in him about his certainty that the replicants are soulless machines that need to be put down.

This is mirrored in the story of Sebastian (William Sanderson), who has a terminal disease and is spending his dying days creating new replicant technology for the Tyrell Corporation. This gives him tremendous empathy with the replicants, who are likewise doomed to die far before their time, and explains why he wants to help them (a decision he later comes to regret). This storyline is not as explored in as much depth in the novel - where a character named Isidore plays the same function and has a bigger role - but it does give some humanity to the replicants.

These themes of using artificial life to question what it means to be human would be revisited just a few years later in the character of Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but much more powerfully in the 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which also inherits Edward James Olmos as an actor and the term "skinjobs" for its replicant-like artificial lifeforms).

The movie's most enduring quality is its startling visuals: the vast, towering blocks of Los Angeles, the flames roaring into the sky from towers, police cars flying in front of colossal advertising hoardings. Disregarding realism (even in 1982, the idea of earthquake-prone Los Angeles looking like this just thirty-seven years later was a stretch), these visuals have lost none of their power and have even gained new power through their high definition remastering. Backed by Vangelis' haunting score, the sweeping effects shots of the city remain powerful and arresting in a way that the disposable CG cityscapes of modern SF movies cannot match. But beyond the effects footage is the minimalist way Scott shoots his futuristic, dystopian city, with dusty offices, bustling street markets and sparse apartments all looking amazing.

Performances are stripped-back, honest and raw: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer all give career-best performances, whilst Edward James Olmos does a huge amount with a small amount of screen time. The film is sparsely-written, sparing with dialogue but making sure almost every conversation is important and memorable. This culminates in the movie's ambiguous and much-debated final confrontation between Deckard and Batty (Rutger Hauer), and Batty's soliloquy on his impending death and the loss of his memories, although he tries to impart some of these to Deckard through his "tears in the rain" speech.

For those who like their movies to be clear and unambiguous, Blade Runner will likely frustrate. This is a film designed to raise questions, engage in philosophical debates and have viewers revel in its slow-burn atmosphere and visuals. There are action sequences, but they are awkward, ugly and brutal rather than visceral and exciting. The so-called love story element is strange and questionable. The ending is ambiguous and, for some viewers, abrupt. But it's also a supremely assured film that is confident in its own ambition and executes it perfectly.

Blade Runner (*****) is strange, haunting and utterly compelling. There are numerous versions available, but arguably the Final Cut - DVD (US,UK), Blu-Ray (US, UK) - is the strongest, representing the director's clearest vision of the story.

A sequel, Blade Runner 2049, will be released on 5 October 2017 in the UK and a day later in the US. There are also three sequels in book form, written by K.W. Jeter, but these have been superseded by the new film.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 trailer released

A new trailer has been released for Blade Runner 2049, the upcoming sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 movie Blade Runner.

Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve (Arrival), will be released on 6 October this year.

ALIEN: COVENANT trailer analysis

20th Century Fox have dropped the first R-rated trailer for Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott's upcoming new film in the Alien franchise. This movie acts as a sequel to Prometheus and a prequel to the original Alien.

Set in 2104, almost eleven years after the events of Prometheus and eighteen years before Alien, the film sees the starship Covenant sent to colonise a distant, habitable planet that the Weyland-Yutani Company has discovered. Upon arrival, the landing party is infected by some kind of spore and mayhem results. The Engineer starship from Prometheus is soon found on the planet and it is confirmed that the android David and Noomi Rapace's character of Elizabeth Shaw will both return from the earlier movie.

Hazarding a guess, I'd say that David and Shaw reached the Engineer homeworld and discovered it had been wiped out by the "black goo" genetic engineering experiments run amok. David and Shaw sent out a distress call that the Company received, resulting in them sending a rescue mission under the cover of being a colonisation expedition. I suspect the real mission will be known only to Walter, the David-type android on the Covenant, and maybe the captain.

The movie appears to have deviated from the original plan. Ridley Scott's original Prometheus II concept would have picked up shortly after the events of Prometheus and followed David and Shaw to the Engineer homeworld, with a later film more directly linking to the events of Alien. My guess is that 20th Century Fox decided to skip that movie and what we're seeing with Covenant is more the plot of the originally-planned third film. The fact that the familiar xenomorph is in this movie (along with a spine-shredding variant known as the "neomorph") adds to that possibility.

If this movie does well, there would appear to be scope for one more prequel movie (leading directly into the events of Alien, explaining what that Engineer ship was doing on LV-426) and then presumably we'd get Neil Blomkamp's Alien 5 project, which has been put on hold whilst Ridley Scott does his thing.

Promo images confirm date setting of ALIEN: COVENANT

In May 2017, Ridley Scott will release Alien: Covenant. This is a sequel of sorts to his 2012 movie Prometheus and will serve as a semi-prequel to the original Alien, apparently bridging the way between the bizarre creatures seen in Prometheus and the more familiar xenomorphs.

For the last few days 20th Century Fox have been unveiling promotional imagery for the new movie, accompanied by times and dates. These confirm that Alien: Covenant takes place (at least) between 7 and 8 December 2104. Prometheus took place in the final week of 2093, concluding on New Year's Day 2094. The original Alien began on 3 June 2122, with Aliens taking place 57 years later in 2179. So, if nothing else, it's good to see that someone is paying attention to the chronology of the series.

 

Alien: Covenant will be released on 19 May.

Trailer for BLADE RUNNER 2049

Warner Brothers have released the first trailer for their upcoming Blade Runner sequel, Blade Runner 2049.

The new film is set thirty years after the original Blade Runner (released in 1982) and will see Harrison Ford return to the role of Rick Deckard, a "blade runner", a cop who tracks down and exposes replicants, genetically-engineered entities with pre-programmed memories who are designed to pass as human. Ryan Gosling is playing a new character, a Los Angeles cop named "K" who has to track down the missing Deckard. Robin Wright and Jared Leto will also star.

Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Arrival) is directing from a script by original Blade Runner co-writer Hampton Fancher and Gotham and Heroes scriptwriter Michael Green. Acclaimed cinematographer Roger Deakins (The Big Lebowski, The Shawshank Redemption, Skyfall) is also on board. Johann Johannsson (Arrival) will be scoring the film.

The need or necessity for a Blade Runner sequel has been fiercely debated by fans over the years. However, the decision by Ridley Scott to step back to only produce the movie and hire Denis Villeneuve as director instead has raised interest in the sequel, due to the latter's excellent work on Arrival.

The appearance of Harrison Ford in an aged state has caused confusion in some quarters, as repeated public statements and interviews with Ridley Scott over the years have confirmed that Deckard is a replicant and thus should either be dead or un-aged. However, the original film itself did not confirm this, only heavily indicated it (with cop Gaff revealing he knows what Deckard has been dreaming about, which would only be possible if he could access Deckard's memories, which can only be done to replicants). It is possible that Scott's view has been altered by the need for a sequel storyline, or that Deckard is some advanced form of replicant capable of ageing.

Blade Runner 2049 will be released on 6 October 2017.

Teaser poster and release date for ALIEN: COVENANT unveiled

20th Century Fox has released a teaser poster for Alien: Covenant, as well as confirming a new release date. The new movie, which will bridge Prometheus with the original Alien, will be released on 19 May.

Ridley Scott has directed the new film, which started life as a direct sequel to Prometheus before metamorphosing in development into a "proper" Aliens movie.

Michael Fassbender reprises his role as android David, with Noomi Rapace returning as Elizabeth Shaw. Guy Pearce is also expected to reappear as Peter Weyland (presumably in flashbacks or recordings). New actors include Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup and Danny McBride.

The new movie will involve a human colony ship arriving on a planet where the only inhabitant is the android David, from Prometheus. According to some reports, the planet may be the homeworld of the Engineers and will involve both the traditional xenomorph and a new type of alien creature, the neomorph, which may be what results when a facehugger impregnates an Engineer.

The Martian

The third manned mission to Mars goes catastrophically wrong when the team are hit by a powerful storm. Most of the crew manage to reach their spacecraft and escape, but astronaut Mark Watney is apparently killed. However, Watney survives. He is able to ensure his short-term survival by reaching the team's abandoned habitat, but he now has to survive potentially four years with extremely limited supplies and resources. When NASA realises that Watney has survived, they begin preparing a rescue mission, fighting the limitations of budgets, science and politics all the way.

The Martian is director Ridley Scott's adaptation of Andy Weir's critically-acclaimed 2011 novel. This is a hard science fiction movie following in the footsteps of films such as Gravity and Interstellar of at least attempting a more plausible and realistic view of space travel.

Ridley Scott's recent career has been patchy, with his 2012 movie Prometheus in particular attracting criticism for its inconsistent script and unrealistic portrayal of how humans would act and react in space. The Martian feels, in part, like an apology for that film. In fact, it's probably Scott's strongest movie since Gladiator. The script (by Drew Goddard) is relaxed and witty, and the tone kept deliberately light in places rather than dwelling on the existential gloom of Watney being trapped alone, millions of miles from the nearest human being and cut off from real time communications with home.

In terms of science, the movie is mostly plausible apart from a couple of issues. The film makes a deliberate choice not to replicate the effects of the low gravity on Mars (which is only one-third that of Earth). Whilst making shooting easier, it's a bit of an odd choice in a movie that spends so much time dwelling on the scientific challenges of a mission to Mars and also makes indirect use of the lower gravity in other parts of the film in sequences showing the various transfer craft launching from the planet. The other issue is that the ship that actually travels between Earth and Mars, the Hermes, is shown as being improbably large, sophisticated and even luxurious. But showing the likelier reality of the crew huddled in a fairly small vessel for months on end would be less impressive. Also, the storm seen at the start of the movie simply wouldn't happen in the way it does.

These issues can be bourne for the successes elsewhere. The cast is excellent, from Damon's marooned astronaut to Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sean Bean leading the attempts to rescue him (Bean even gets a Lord of the Rings joke as a sly nod to the audience). Able support is provided by Michael Pena, Kate Mara and Benedict Wong. More impressively, the film knows how to deploy its talent to maximum effect, meaning that the familiar name-heavy cast never feels muddled or stuffed. Indeed, some actors like Sebastian Stan and Donald Glover put in solid, nuanced performances in impressively limited screen time, leaving you wanting more.

But the film's focus stays on Damon for most of the film, showing how he deploys humour and resolve to overcome the nightmare predicament he finds himself in. The film's commitment (a few forgivable lapses into movie illogic aside) to real science and its cooperation with NASA makes for an authentic-feeling, positive story. It may be too idealistic - the Chinese give up an important technical secret a bit too easily and the film occasionally feels like a recruiting tool for NASA - but it's good to see a film suggesting that humans can be better than they are now and showing that we can achieve the impossible, at a price.

The Martian (****½) is on general release now.

Ridley Scott confuses everyone with PROMETHEUS sequel

Ridley Scott has made a series of somewhat odd comments about the upcoming sequel to Prometheus, his 2012 quasi-prequel to Alien.

Prometheus 2 is still due to go into production in February 2016 and will see Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender reprise their roles as Elizabeth Shaw and the android David. At the end of Prometheus they stole an alien starship and set out to find the homeworld of the Engineers and somehow stop them from destroying Earth. In the meantime, a horrendous and almost-familiar alien creature had come into being on LV-223, although with no food around and no more people or Engineers, presumably its chances for long-term survival are bleak.

Scott had previously said there would be a trilogy of films in this series and the last film would tie in with the original Alien, presumably explaining why the Engineer starship carrying hundreds of facehugger eggs ended up crashed on LV-426, as we see it at the start of Alien. The middle film in the saga would have the fewest connections to the rest of the Aliens universe, focusing as it likely does on the Engineers and their backstory.

Scott doubled down on this last week, confirming that Prometheus 2 would not feature the traditional xenomorph at all (not even in the very brief and ambiguous way the original did in its closing moments) and we'd have to wait until Prometheus 3...or Prometheus 4, although knowing Scott's sense of humour he may have been taking the mickey out of fans with that last statement.

Today, just to confuse everyone further, Scott announced that Prometheus 2 will in fact now be called Alien: Paradise Lost. Erm.

There are several explanations here. The most likely is that Fox has decided it wants to use a brand name to "universify" the Alien franchise in the same way Marvel have with their films and Disney has with Star Wars, with lots of films in the same universe even if some are connected only tangentially. Fox are also developing a new core Alien film with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Hicks (Michael Biehn), to be directed by Neill Blomkamp. Although it has the working title Alien 5, this other film seems likely to jettison Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection from continuity and pick up instead twenty years or so after the events of Aliens. Some of Blomkamp's concept art for the film shows an Engineer starship being dissected by humans (possibly from the Weyland-Yutani Company), so it might be that Alien 5 and Paradise Lost will yet find a way of tying into one another. Or it might just be a bit of branding, and we may even see the first film retitled Alien: Prometheus for some future re-release.

Some thoughts on how Prometheus and Alien tie into one another can be found here.

PROMETHEUS II greenlit for 2017 release

Ridley Scott will start shooting the sequel to the 2012 SF movie Prometheus in January 2016, likely with a view to releasing the film in 2017.

The news came as a slight surprise. Scott had seemingly pushed the sequel onto the backburner in favour of other projects, such as the long-gestating Blade Runner II. The muted critical response to the original movie and its middling financial success were believed to have been disappointing to 20th Century Fox as well. More notably, the studio has also been developing an Alien 5 with director Neil Blomkamp, with Sigourney Weaver set to return as Ripley and Michael Biehn as Hicks in a movie that seemingly ignores the third and fourth films. There had been theories that Alien 5's existence made a sequel to Prometheus less likely.

However, the sequel is now being fast-tracked. Michael Green and Jack Paglen have written the script (Damon Lindelof is not involved this time around) and Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender have already committed to reprising their roles as Shaw and David. The movie will presumably pick up on their adventures having seized an Engineer starship and taken off to find their homeworld at the end of the first movie. According to Scott, the traditional xenomorph alien will not appear in this film, despite hints to its origins in the previous one.

Ridley Scott developing a FLASHMAN movie

Ridley Scott's production company is developing a film based on the Flashman novels by George Macdonald Fraser.

Dominic West casually putting it out there that he'd be down for this.

Fraser published twelve Flashman books in his lifetime, before his death in 2008. The books chronicle the military career of the fictional Harry Flashman. Flashman is a minor character in Thomas Hughes's 1856 novel John Brown's School Days, a noted bully and coward expelled from Rugby School for drunkenness, and Fraser decided it would be amusing to see what happened to him next. The novels begin in 1839 with the 17-year-old Flashman joining the British Army and getting caught up in the disastrous events of the First Afghan War, which ended with the British forces being routed from Kabul and being completely destroyed apart from a single survivor who made it back to friendly lines (and nine soldiers taken prisoner). Fraser made Flashman a second survivor and explained his lack of recognition due to the fact he was behind enemy lines in native dress, thanks to a supreme facility for learning foreign languages quickly (which comes in handy many times in later books).

Fraser's genius was making Flashman an anti-hero, a protagonist whose first reaction to danger is to run away, hide, or, reluctantly, attempt some kind of sneaky ambush or use overwhelming firepower to make up for his own lack of personal courage. Flashman is also a lecher and a womaniser, unafraid to claim credit for others' failings and to make full use of his plaudits and unearned reputation for his own advancement. As the books continue, Flashman finds his reputation backfiring on him as he is constantly ordered to the most dangerous and lethal places in the world to serve the ends of the British Empire. As well as a commissioned soldier and officer, Flashman is employed as a diplomat, and an agent provocateur. Flashman also, by sheer reluctant experience, eventually ends up as a fairly capable military commander and is not unskilled in personal combat, even if his cowardly instincts never entirely desert him.

The books range over most of the major British military entanglements of the 19th Century, including the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and the Taiping Rebellion. As Flashman is a lord and noble in his own right, his own personal adventures see him winding up in various foreign conflicts as well, including recurring visits to the United States. Sadly, Fraser never wrote the story of Flashman's involvement in the American Civil War, during which Flashman apparently fought on both sides and become a personal contact of Abraham Lincoln, with whom he shared a mutual dislike. This adventure is alluded to frequently in the other books.

Although not SFF in themselves, the Flashman novels have been hugely influential in the genre. Sandy Mitchell's splendid Ciaphas Cain series of novels depict the adventures of a very Flashman-esque Imperial Commissar in the Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy universe, whilst Mark Lawrence's current Red Queen's War trilogy features Jalan Kendeth, a protagonist cut from the Flashman mould. George R.R. Martin is a huge Flashman fan and elements of Flashman's character can be found in several Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones figures, most notably Tyrion Lannister. Outside of SFF, Rik Mayall's memorable character Lord Flasheart from the Blackadder TV series appears to be based on Flashman's public persona (the brave braggart, unstoppable warrior and unrelenting lech), although Blackadder himself is closer to Flashman's true character.

Ridley Scott's plans for the character are unclear, as one of the strengths of the character is that you can drop in on him at any time in his life. Actor Dominic West (The Wire, The Hour) is a huge Flashman fan and has made appearances as the character, so if they're aiming for the middle-aged Flashman he would seem to be the logical choice.

New ALIEN film confirmed

20th Century Fox have commissioned director Neill Blomkamp to work on a new Alien film. The director of District 9, Elysium and Chappie had hinted he was working on ideas for a new film in the franchise a few months ago.

The new project is proceeding simultaneously alongside Ridley Scott's Prometheus II. Scott had previously suggested that the sequel to Prometheus would move away from even the vague connections to the xenomorphs the original film had in favour of the mythology and backstory of the Engineers. Whilst Fox is okay with this - Prometheus grossed almost half a billion dollars at the box office - they also seem to want to continue the core Alien franchise at the same time.

Little is known about the new film, although in Blomkamp's concept art it appears he was considering a 'proper' Alien 5 with Sigourney Weaver and possibly even Michael Biehn reappearing in their roles as Ripley and Hicks. The fact that Hicks died (controversially off-screen) in Alien 3 has hinted that Biehn might be following Scott's idea that none of the films after Aliens should be considered canon. I can't see Fox entirely being happy with that (it would remove no less than four films from the canon) unless they thought it would make them a ton of cash.

If work is only starting now, it's unlikely we will see Alien 5 before late 2017 or early 2018 at the earliest. This would make for easily the longest gap in the main series since the franchise started in 1979. It remains to be seen if Blomkamp can breathe some new life into this increasingly tired foe.