The film itself doesn’t arrive until 2017, so there’s plenty of time for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus sequel to change names about six times. It’s up to two so far, with Scott announcing that the sci-fi thriller is currently called Alien: Covenant. An official title treatment has also been revealed.
We suppose that makes three after Prometheus 2 (or Untitled Prometheus Sequel), and Alien: Paradise Lost, and who knows if it will stick. Scott let the change slip while talking about his career at the AFI Film Festival, at which The Playlist was in attendance. Expounding on how he doesn’t have some giant master map for his career, he got into how _The Martia_n developed. “I’ve got no plan,” Scott said, discussing his overall career and which project follows another. “I go from pillar to post randomly. I have this childlike fascination and thrill of doing it. I was going to be doing what will be called Alien: Covenant, which starts shooting next February, and we were struggling then with the screenplay there and then there was a phone call, somebody saying, ‘Listen, we’ve got this thing which is completely written called Martian’, and I said, ‘Huh.’ And I sped read it in an hour and by mid-afternoon, I talked to Fox and said, ‘I need to talk to ‘Drew Goddard…’”
And “covenant” could also refer to Scott’s association with the film series in general, which he’s now reclaiming and has put the breaks on Neill Blomkamp’s take, at least for now. “I’m trying to keep this for myself,” he told IGN recently. “I let the other one [Alien] get away from me – I shouldn’t have… I’m trying to re-resurrect the beast and let if off the hook for a while because I’m coming back into the back-end of Alien." As for the first official word on the plot? Here you go... "Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world -- whose sole inhabitant is the synthetic’ David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.”
Aien: Covenant has a set US release date of October 6, 2017, and we'll find out soon when it'll hit the UK. For more from Scott on his career and all things Alien, you should check out our Ridley Scott special Empire Podcast.