The first two Alien movies are nigh on legendary. The first, 1979’s Alien, was basically a haunted house story in space. You knew it wasn’t messing around based on the tagline along — “In space no one can hear you scream” — and the movie followed through.
Then, 1986’s Aliens set a new benchmark for action filmmaking that’s still influential today. Unfortunately, follow-ups Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection weren’t nearly as well-received, and the mainline franchise has been quiet ever since. Oh, sure, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is set in the same universe, and the Alien vs. Predator movies are goofy fun, but the days when Sigourney Weaver battled Xenomorphs as the indomitable Lt. Ellen Ripley are over.
Or are they? Speaking to Empire, Weaver revealed that longtime Alien producer Walter Hill, who’s been with the franchise since the very beginning, has approached her with a 50-page treatment for a new movie featuring Ripley. But she doesn’t sound sold. “I don’t know,” she said. “Ridley has gone in a different direction. Maybe Ripley has done her bit. She deserves a rest.”
I can sympathize with that; we’re talking about a 40-year-old movie franchise here. Does it really need to continue? But it’s not like Weaver isn’t happy it’s stuck around. “I’m so glad continues to resonate with people. I admire her, too. She gets things done … I’ve always felt she was such a partner. She is always in my stomach.”
Not long after that, Hill himself gave some details about that treatment to Syfy Wire, and sounds way more optimistic about potentially getting it made, provided Weaver is on board. “Sigourney, as she has from the very beginning, is being too modest about her proven ability to pull off the idea — which is to tell a story that scares the pants off your date, kicks the ass of a new Xenomorph, and conducts a meditation on both the universe of the Alien franchise and the destiny of the character of Lt. Ellen Ripley,” he said.
Hill revealed that he wrote the treatment with David Giler, another producer who’d been there from their start. Brandywine Productions, their production company, even released an image of the title page:
Image: Brandwine Productions
“In space no one can hear you scream,” reads the line at the top of the page, followed by, “In space no one can hear you dream.” Oh?
There are also a couple of quotations down at the bottom, one from Edgar Allen Poe (“All that we see or seem, Is but a dream within a dream”) and one from William Tecumseh Sherman, most famous for his destructive march to the sea during the Civil War (“War is hell”).
That’s a lotta talk about dreams. Would Alien V take place in Ripley’s head, or some kind of advanced dream-o-sphere or something? Was it all a dream the whole time? Are the Xenomorphs literally nightmare creatures plucked from someone’s head using advanced technology and set loose on the universe? And how do you hear someone dream, anyway?
These are all questions for when and if Alien V ever gets the green light. Consider me tentatively interested.
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h/t SyFy Wire