Ridley Scott’s Alien: Awakening, the on-hiatus sequel to Alien: Covenant, might return the action to the place where everything began, the alien “home world” LV-426. Unfortunately, after the soft box office returns for Alien: Covenant, there’s no guarantee the next Alien movie will ever see the light of day. Scott previously said he has plans for many more Alien stories, and says he wants to keep making them even though Disney now owns the franchise after the acquisition of Fox’s movie and TV assets.
After many years away from the franchise he birthed with 1979’s classic Alien, Scott returned to the series for 2015’s Prometheus, a film that attempted to expand Alien lore by introducing the race known as the Engineers. Then, 2017’s Alien: Covenant picked up the story by journeying to the Engineers’ home world, revealing that the entire race was wiped out by Prometheus’ android character David, who had himself taken up the Engineers’ experiments with creating life. The end of Alien: Covenant saw David capturing the story’s few surviving human characters and heading off for an unknown destination, in an obvious set-up for yet another sequel.
That next sequel, which may or may not ever come to fruition, is reportedly called Alien: Awakening. A script for the on-hiatus film was completed by writer John Logan, but little is known about the actual story. However, Empire Magazine (via HNE.co) has now learned a few details which they have revealed in their new Empire Classics Alien special issue. Among the revelations: Logan’s script for Alien: Awakening would see the Engineers seeking revenge against David for his genocidal black-goo attack against them. Empire then went on to speculate that the film could journey to LV-426, the mystery moon from the original Alien, going by certain prior remarks made by Scott. The key quote from Scott they cite is “We’re gonna actually go to the planet,” in other words the place where everything kicked off in Alien.
This game of connect-the-dots leads to a possible scenario that would see the Engineers pursuing David, and David using his newly created Xenomorphs as biological weapons against them. Ultimately, the story would potentially show how the alien craft from the first Alien ended up with a hold full of eggs, and subsequently wound up crashing on the surface of LV-426. This story would also likely finally explain the mystery of the Space Jockey, the weird dead being encountered by the crew of the Nostromo. Fans have already speculated that the Space Jockey might be a hybrid of David and a Xenomorph, a bizarre theory that if true would see David going farther than ever before in his bizarre God-like experimentation with life.
Obviously, everything above is in the realm of speculation and should be taken with a grain of salt. On the one hand, it would make total sense for the next Alien sequel to wrap up on LV-426 and finally provide answers to the series’ most enduring mysteries, like where the derelict ship came from and what the Space Jockey is. On the other hand, Scott has shown a desire to somewhat subvert expectations with his recent Alien films, so there’s no guarantee he would necessarily do the “obvious” thing. Either way, the prospects of Alien: Awakening ever seeing the light of day seem shaky at best after Alien: Covenant failed at the box office. If the Alien saga does continue, it might have to do so in a small-screen format, perhaps as a streaming series or one-off movie.
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Source: Empire Magazine (via HNE.co)
