Sigourney Weaver Still Open To Making ALIEN 5 And Finishing The Ripley Saga

A fifth Alien movie has been in development and limbo for almost two decades, but a new glimmer of hope has arrived. Sigourney Weaver recently commented on her desire to reprise the role of Ripley and finally end her story for good in Alien 5. For years she's been hinting that she wants it to happen, I'm sure Fox wants that as well, but wants to round-out their Prometheus sequel first. Here's what Weaver had to say at the Hero Complex Film Festival.

“Had we done a fifth one, I don’t doubt that her humanity would have prevailed. …I do feel like there is more story to tell.”

“I feel a longing from fans for the story to be finished,” she said, adding, “I could imagine a situation where we finish telling the story.”

Ideas and scripts for fifth film has been been kicking around for almost 20 years. You might remember that in Alien Resurrection, Joss Whedon and Fox left a large potential for more films. Leaving the xenomorph-hybrid Ripley clone alive on Earth (Paris, France to be exact) with her new pirate comrades. There had been versions of the script that included xenomorphs being set loose on Earth, which Weaver was very much against. Here's a little quote from Signourney about making a fifth movie.

"We were thinking about doing this fifth one, and I didn't really want to go ahead and do it on Earth," Weaver revealed. "So we kind of left the sentence unfinished. There's something slightly unfinished to me about it. I wasn't too keen to come to Earth. I always feel that science fiction, when it comes to Earth, it's a little [Weaver mimics yawning]. I wanted to go back to the original planet that the space jockey brought the eggs from and go back into the alien world rather than have the alien arrive in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower."

Joss Whedon admittedly started work on writing the next film, it's unknown how much of his work was going to be used in fifth installment. At one point Ridley Scott and James Cameron were willing to partner for Alien 5, Weaver agreed to return as well. Cameron would write-produce (I assume with some help from Whedon?) the film with Ridley set to direct. The studio decided on making Alien Vs Predator instead, and James Cameron walked away completely disgusted by the move. The idea was to have Ripley seek-out the origin planet of the xenomorphs and destroy them completely. You can understand how that idea of the xenomorph planet, may have influenced the concepts for Pandora.

This led to Fox developing the two-part prequel Alien: Origins, which would explore the origins of space jockey alien and where the xenomorphs came from. This was later turned into what we now know as Prometheus, and Fox was able to wrangle Ridley Scott back into the director's chair. I know a lot of people where expecting the first film to answer all their questions, but it was always envisioned as two-parter. Prometheus 2 (Paradise) will likely hold the answers most were assuming would be revealed in the first film.

The ball is in the court of 20th Century Fox, who is seemingly putting all their effort into their X-Men and Avatar franchises. Here is hoping they do the right thing and get this project moving again, as Prometheus has become it's own animal and only slightly connected to the Alien franchise. Fans have been waiting since 1997 for this to happen, let's not let that opportunity just disappear.

SOURCE: LATIMES