Alien: Covenant – Ridley Scott Confirms Noomi Rapace Return; Discusses Why He Came Back to the Alien Franchise
I remember before Prometheus came out, getting info about the film was akin to pulling teeth. Now nary a day goes by without Ridley Scott talking about his plans for the next several films. Read on for the latest.
First up, Scott has confirmed to Screen Daily that Noomi Rapace will be returning for the upcoming Alien: Covenant. She’ll be reprising her role as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, who was last seen with Michael Fassbender’s severed head boarding a ship headed to the Engineer’s home world.
Scott explained that Fassbender will play two roles in the next film and that Prometheus star Noomi Rapace would return in a minor part. He said that casting of the Covenant crew roles is in the advanced stages but declined to name names, saying “we haven’t signed the contracts yet.”
From there, Scott goes on to speak with THR, telling the site his new obsession with Alien sequels stems from Scott’s frustration over the franchise sequels and how the filmmakers never asked “why?”
Alien: Covenant and the following two films will be origin stories, answering the “very basic questions posed in Alien: why the alien, who might have made it, and where did it come from?” Scott revealed at a press conference in Sydney, where he is starting pre-production on Covenant, the first sequel to Prometheus.
“It’s a very complex story. It’s an evolution of what I first did with Prometheus,” he said of the new film, which tells the story of the crew of the colony ship Covenant, who discover what they think is an uncharted paradise but is actually a dark, dangerous world, whose sole inhabitant is the synthetic David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
“Prometheus was born out of my frustration that on Alien in 1979 – I only did one as I don’t normally do sequels. I was amazed that in the 3 that followed that no-one asked the question ‘why the Alien, who made it, and why?’ Very basic questions. So I came up with the notion of Prometheus 1, which starts to indicate who might have made it and where it came from,” Scott said.
“So I’m now going to the next one, which is the next evolution directly connected with the first one, which was this Shaw, when he replaced Michael Fassbender in two pieces, and we’ll kind of pick it up there, and it will evolve. When that’s finished, there’ll be another one and then another one which will gradually drive into the back entrance of the film in 1979,” the British director revealed.
“So, in other words, why was this space jockey there, and why did he have an Alien inside him? And those questions will be answered,” he added.
In addition to his frustration with the sequels, there’s one other reason why he’s returned to the franchise… Star Wars.
“Star Wars will be a juggernaut. Why do you think I’m doing sequels?” Scott quipped.
Alien: Covenant heads to theaters on October 6, 2017.
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