Sigourney Weaver Wants to Give Her 'Alien' Heroine a 'Satisfying' Send-Off
Sigourney Weaver in the original ‘Alien’ (Everett)
Ridley Scott is well underway filming Alien: Covenant, the Katherine Waterston-led film that will be the first of three prequels to his 1979 film. (That’s not counting his 2012 Prometheus, which is now, I guess, the prequel to a prequel trilogy?) That ongoing project has indefinitely delayed the long-discussed Alien 5, which is to be helmed by District 9 and Chappie director Neill Blomkamp, and is intended to include Sigourney Weaver’s return to the series as badass heroine Ellen Ripley. And according to a new Entertainment Weekly report, the actress also says the sequel would finally given the character the send-off she deserved.
Speaking during last week’s announcement of a 30th anniversary reunion of the cast of 1986’s Aliens at San Diego Comic-Con, Weaver discussed the fact that Blomkamp’s entry will interrupt the series’ established chronology by taking place after Aliens, and before David Fincher’s plagued-by-studio-interference Alien 3 (in which Ripley, impregnated with a xenomorph, commits suicide at story’s conclusion). Moreover, she said that she was still raring to go on the production, which would conclude Ripley’s personal saga in a satisfying way:
“Well, we have a great script. Fox asked us to delay so Ridley Scott could shoot his [second] Prometheus movie. That was too bad because we would have already done it by now…It’s a great story and it’s satisfying to me to give this woman an ending.”
Weaver’s comments suggest that she’s not too pleased with the paths forged by both 1992’s Alien 3 and 1997’s Alien Resurrection, though one might argue that those films — directed by Fincher and Amélie’s Jean-Pierre Jeunet — were, however flawed, spearheaded by visionary directors with more impressive track records than Blomkamp. Nonetheless, she remains optimistic that another Alien go-round is in the cards, saying “It’s a tribute to all of the great work that the other directors have done, in a way, but goes in a completely new direction. I hope we’ll do it.”
You can read her entire thoughts on her possible return to the franchise at EW.com.
