Why Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 Movie Died, Explained By Sigourney Weaver

There seem to be two types of "Alien" fans in the world. In one camp, there are people who like the slow, ineffable dread of Ridley Scott's 1979 film "Alien," and who appreciate the series as a particularly well-done, atmospheric monster movie. This camp likes to see unstoppable monsters stalking and killing human meat, merely because it is an aggressive, chaos-driven predator. In the other camp, there are people who like the blustering, high-octane action of James Cameron's 1986 sequel "Aliens." That film features overconfident marines armed with machine guns who can blast through monsters.

The "Alien" series has been torn between these two concepts ever since, with half of the "Alien" sequels skewing toward the undefined evils of the cosmos, and the other half being more action/fight oriented. All the debates over the "Alien" franchise seems to boil down to this fundamental schism. 

Filmmaker Neill Blomkamp is clearly in the "action" camp. Back in 2015, Blomkamp announced that he was working on an "Alien" film that would ignore the events of all the "Alien" sequels made since 1986. His new film would essentially be "Aliens 2," telling a more action-packed story. The project got a lot of attention, and both Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron announced in 2016 that they would indeed be interested in helping Blomkamp out with his project. He released a lot of tantalizing concept art. Sadly, the project stalled repeatedly, facing delay after delay. The flick was officially proclaimed dead in 2022. 

The website AVPGalaxyNews recently attended an "Alien" screening in France, where Weaver was on hand. When asked why "Aliens 2" never happened, Weaver theorized that it was all because Ridley Scott wanted control of the series back, effectively killing any ancillary projects. Scott went on to make "Alien: Covenant" in 2017.

Weaver recalled seeing Blomkamp's concept art, and was genuinely excited about the project. At that point, Blomkamp had already made his Oscar-nominated film "District 9," and just completed his robot-centered actioner "Chappie." Weaver was in "Chappie," so she was enthused about his skill and his style. Blomkamp was rolling high in 2015, proving that he could handle weird monsters, complex machines, and big budgets with equal aplomb. 

But "Alien" wasn't his property. Indeed, when Blomkamp began talking about his own "Alien" project," Ridley Scott started to get territorial. Scott had made the "Alien" prequel "Prometheus" in 2012, so he was already moving to reclaim the series back from the action-loving camp of "Aliens" fans. That, it seems, included Blomkamp. As Weaver said:

"I think like many of us, I was a big admirer of Neill. His movie was so striking, and I worked with him on a movie called ["Chappie"]. And I loved working with Neill. And he had this idea of bringing Ripley and Newt back. It was a wonderful script and unfortunately, it was at that point I think that Ridley Scott decided to be very possessive about the series and really drilled down on his prequels. And so I think it was a disaster for that project. We were never able to ... I think Neil in fact just gave up and he's so talented. I wish him all the best." 

The project died on the vine, and Blomkamp wouldn't make another movie until "Demonic" in 2021. As mentioned, Scott made "Alien: Covenant" in 2017. Disney, however, purchased the "Alien" movies when they bought Fox back in 2017, so the newer "Alien" movies are all done without the direct input of Blomkamp or Scott. Whoever wins, they both lost.