Alien: Awakening - Is It Happening?

In 2012, Ridley Scott took the "Alien" franchise in a bold — and controversial — new direction. "Prometheus" may not have been a roaring success with the critics, but it nevertheless scored an impressive $400 million at the global box office. Five years later, Scott helmed "Alien: Covenant," a less off-piste (and, let's face it, less good) sequel that underperformed both critically and financially. Nevertheless, "Covenant" ended on a cliffhanger-of-sorts, with David (Michael Fassbender) forcing Daniels (Katherine Waterston) into cryostasis before placing a pair of facehugger embryos into cold storage.

And then ... nothing. Despite the open-ended conclusion of "Covenant," Scott has yet to return to the "Alien" universe as a director, and the final installment in the franchise's prequel trilogy simply never emerged. So what went wrong? Why haven't we seen this story's conclusion hit theaters, and will it happen at all? Of course, it's hard to say for sure — but that doesn't mean we can't make a decent guess.

Ridley Scott first hinted at a sequel to "Alien: Covenant" back in 2017, just days before the movie's U.S. release. In an interview with Fandango, Scott suggested he was already preparing to work on the third "Alien" prequel — and he even appeared to reveal its title. "It will go 'Prometheus,' 'Awakening,' 'Covenant,'" he said, when asked where it might fit into the saga's timeline. A kind of interquel between "Prometheus" and "Covenant" makes for a curious proposition, no doubt. Sadly, we never found out how it might all come together.

Why? Well, much happened between then and now. "Covenant" disappointed at the box office, for one thing. In December 2017, a user claiming to be a crew member on "Covenant" claimed on the Blu-Ray.com forums (via AVP Galaxy) that 20th Century halted pre-production on "Awakening" shortly after "Covenant" hit theaters. "So the original plan of pumping out another quickly has definitely changed with no immediate plans for anything," they added.

A couple of years later, Disney purchased 20th Century Fox from media magnate Rupert Murdoch. In the aftermath, Disney canceled a slew of Fox's TV and film projects, and while "Awakening" has never been named as one of them, we've had no indication that it survived, either. Meanwhile, Ridley Scott's 2020 first-look deal with Apple TV, the director's busy upcoming release slate, and Disney's announcement of two standalone "Alien" projects (more on them later) only seemed to substantiate an unfortunate truth: "Alien: Awakening" is dead in the water.

It's probably fair to say that, without Ridley Scott, "Alien: Awakening" will never happen. Whether you think "Prometheus" and "Covenant" were among Scott's best or worst movies, they were both very much his (chest-bursting) babies, and the chances of a new director joining the franchise to helm a third prequel stand at close to zero. With that in mind, you can learn a lot from what he has said — or not said — about "Awakening" in recent years.

Scott first mentioned "Alien: Awakening" in his 2017 interview with Fandango. After that, however, he went quiet on the subject. Only in 2020, about a month after news of his Apple TV deal landed in the press, did he allude to the "Covenant" sequel once more, telling The Los Angeles Times that there was still "a lot of mileage" in the "Alien" franchise. Around the same time, he told Forbes that another movie was still "in process," adding, "We went down a route to try and reinvent the wheel with 'Prometheus' and 'Covenant.' ... But you know, you're asking fundamental questions like, 'Has the Alien himself, the facehugger, the chestburster, have they all run out of steam? Do you have to rethink the whole bloody thing and simply use the word franchise?' That's always the fundamental question."

It's obviously reassuring to hear that Scott hasn't gone completely cold on "Alien: Awakening" (or, at least, he hadn't in 2020) but let's not kid ourselves: He doesn't exactly seem brimming with enthusiasm — and the fact that he's said nothing about it since doesn't kindle much hope.

Often, very little is known about the plot of a film left languishing in development hell, especially since, most of the time, the script is constantly rewritten as new writers flit in and out of the project. That said, we possibly know a little about one version of the "Awakening" story.

In 2018, Empire reported that both Ridley Scott and "Alien: Covenant" screenwriter John Logan had already mapped out the story of the third "Alien" prequel. Apparently, "Awakening" would see David journey to LV-426, the planet Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the Nostromo crew visit at the beginning of "Alien." Empire also claims "Awakening" would mark the return of the Engineers; the publication's report suggests that the survivors of the species would set out to hunt down David, most likely to exact revenge for destroying Paradise in "Covenant."

Since nobody has any idea what state "Awakening" is currently in, however, it's more or less impossible to say how much of this original premise remains intact — if there's anything left at all ... or if those reports were even accurate. At the time, the late, great Scott Wampler of Birth.Movies.Death. reported that despite the Empire claim, there was no script for "Awakening," per an unnamed source. Whatever the veracity of that Empire report, if "Awakening" does ever come to fruition, we can probably make a few assumptions about what the story will involve: David, a rag-tag bunch of humans, some sort of creepy Xenomorph, and a whole lot of death and destruction.

Like pretty much every movie in the "Alien" franchise, "Prometheus" and "Covenant" featured very little overlap in their casts, and there's no reason to believe "Awakening" would be any different. We can safely assume, of course, Michael Fassbender's return as the genocidal android David. In our opinion, "Prometheus" is one of Fassbender's best films and David is one of his all-time performances. Evidently, he feels the same way, as he told Bad Taste in 2019 that he'd "love to" return to the "Alien" franchise. "I love the character," he said. "It's a lot of fun."

Katherine Waterson, whose character, Daniels, was one of two survivors at the end of "Covenant," has also said she would come back for another movie. In 2019, she told The Playlist that, although there had been no talk with Ridley Scott about a "Covenant" sequel, she would be "absolutely game" to do more. "But that's all I know," she added. "I'm sure they've changed their minds anyway."

Aside from that, who can say? Any number of actors could turn up in a potential third "Alien" prequel. Even the all-time great Sigourney Weaver could possibly appear. In August 2024, the "Alien" queen herself spoke with Deadline about the character of Ripley, saying she'd possibly think it over if the right story came along. As she put it, "How much does the public really need or want another Ripley movie? I don't really sit around and think about it, but if it came up, I would consider it. It has come up a bunch of times, but I'm also busy doing other things. Ripley has earned her rest."

Little evidence for the untimely death of "Alien: Awakening" is quite so convincing as the existence of Disney's two new "Alien" projects.

In December 2020, Variety reported that "Legion" and "Fargo" showrunner Noah Hawley had signed up to bring an "Alien" TV series to FX. With Ridley Scott on board as a producer, the series was eventually titled "Alien: Earth." Starring Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, and Essie Davis, this series is set on our own blue planet and takes place about 30 years before the events of 1979's "Alien." FX's chief John Landgraf said in a public announcement that we should expect the "timeless horror of the first 'Alien' film with the non-stop action of the second" when the series is released in 2025.

As for the second project, "Don't Breathe" and "Evil Dead" filmmaker Fede Álvarez unleashed all sorts of nightmarish horror with "Alien: Romulus." Starring Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, and Isabela Merced, "Romulus" follows a group of young space miners who end up on board a deserted space station, searching for a way to escape their dreary lives and make it to the brighter world of Yvaga. Unfortunately, said space station actually isn't so deserted after all, as it's full of facehuggers and Xenomorphs. 

Ridley Scott served as a producer on the film, and director Fede Álvarez already has plans for a possible follow-up, telling The Hollywood Reporter, "So, once we finished [writing], we started thinking, 'What do you think happens when or if [the 'Romulus' survivors] get to Yvaga? Is it going to be great? Or is it a terrible place?' We tend to believe it's probably a terrible place that they think is great and fantasize about, so we naturally started thinking about where it goes and what's going to happen. And then, a few minutes in, we go, 'Oh, that sounds like a sequel.'"