It’s been a while since the last Alien movie came out, with 2017’s Alien: Covenant following up on plot threads left behind by 2012’s Prometheus. That will change come next year, as the next theatrical Alien installment (the ninth in total, if we’re counting the Alien vs. Predator movies) is slated among the 2024 movie releases. However, Ridley Scott, the director of 1979’s Alien, has already seen this movie, and afterwards he had some high praise for director and co-writer Fede Álvarez that included an f-bomb.
While speaking with fellow filmmaker Guillermo del Toro at the DGA Latino Summit, Álvarez, who co-wrote the new Alien movie with Rod Sayagues, shared that his “director’s cut” had been shown Scott, who’s one of the producers. Álvarez explained how he was “terrified” to meet Scott in person after afterwards because he’d heard that the man who also helmed Prometheus and Covenant is “really tough,” particularly when it “has something to do with his moves.” Fortunately, the Blade Runner director had nothing but kind words to say about this next chapter in the Alien saga, with Álvarez recalling:
And then he walks into the room and he did say, ‘Fede, what can I say? It’s fucking great.’… 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, granted, but particularly with something like this, that he would recognize it 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!
Coming from someone who, as Fede Álvarez noted, “had issues” with Blade Runner 2049 and described Top Gun: Maverick as “meh” to the Don’t Breathe director (remember that the original Top Gun was directed by his brother, Tony Scott), for Ridley Scott to call the new Alien movie “fucking great” is a tremendous achievement. Ahead of that big moment, Álvarez knew it was important to for Álvarez to meet with Scott in person, look him in the eye and get his unfiltered opinion, no matter which way it swung. It ended up swinging positively, with Scott appreciating both Álvarez’s directing and his writing work.
Originally the reportedly-titled Alien: Romulus was going to be streaming exclusively on Hulu, but it shifted to a theatrical release in June 2023. No specific story details have been shared with the public yet, but the plot synopsis states it will follow “a group of young people on a distant world, who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” Its cast includes Cailee Spaeny, Isabella Merced, David Johnson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu.
The next Alien movie comes out on August 16, 2024, so there’s ten months to go before we learn if the public’s consensus about it will be the same as Ridley Scott’s. Meanwhile, if you’re looking to get an Alien fix on streaming, both the original Alien and Alien 3 can be viewed with a Hulu subscription.